
Pass 1; 

Book 

Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSE 



JltcrrrOL^ Vol 4'- A^i. yjy 



THE 



YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND; 



CONTACTING 



ADMONITIONS FOR THE ERRING, COUNSEL FOR THE TEMPTED, 

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE DESPONDING, 

AND HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 



DANIEL C. EDDY, D. D. 
M 






Nefo Series* 



BOSTON: 
G-R-A.VES A-HNTID YOUNG, 

24 CORNHILL. 

1865. 






Entered according to Act of Congrress, in the year 1865, by 

DANIEL C. EDDY, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 







Stereotyped and Printed by 

J . E . Fa ■ w | i. l AID COMPANT, 

37 CoogMM Street, Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTUEE I. 
The Hour and the Man 11 



LECTUEE IL 
The Game of Life 56 

LECTUEE III. 
Dangers of Life in the City 74 

LECTUEE IV. 
On the Choice of Associates 99 

LECTUEE V. 
The Fast Yodng Man 126 

» 

LECTUEE VL 
On Investments 151 



Till CONTENTS. 

Pago 

LECTUKE VII. 
On Reading 171 

LECTUEE VIII. 
On the Weakness or Human Nature 196 

LECTUEE IX. 
A Human Model 216 

LECTUEE X. 
Christ : the Perfect Model 238 



THE YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 



LECTURE I. 



<F 



THE HOUR AND THE MAW. 
Be strong, and quit yourselves like men. 1 Samuel, iv. 9. 

^VEBBT man has his hour ! There comes a 
period of ripeness in the life of every individ- 
ual, church, and nation, when a great choice is 
presented, a great blessing offered, and a great future 
unfolded. If the choice is wisely made, the recipient 
of the blessing enters into all the greatness of the 
future. If the blessing is rejected, the noblest hour 
of life, the grandest opportunity of existence, indi- 
vidual or national, is lost, and the epoch, instead of 
being a crisis of growth, becomes a crisis of deca- 
dence. The nation which had ripened for new 
greatness begins to decay, and the man who knew 
not his hour, settles down, never again, in the un- 
folding purposes of God, to have the opportunity to 
make himself what he might have been. 

This choice was presented to the ancient Hebrews ! 



12 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 

Ages conspired to bring that nation to ripeness. 
The vassalage in Egypt, the weary pilgrimage in the 
wilderness, the wars with the Canaanites, the strug- 
gles with the kingly power, the Babylonian captivity, 
and the Roman servitude were all preparatory to the 
choice the nation was to make. At length, when 
the nation was ripe, God presented the Messiah as the 
choice of the people. Then was the great and un- 
speakable crisis of national being. Everything had 
gravitated toward that hour. Everything had been 
tending toward that centre. Christ was held out to 
l)e accepted or rejected. Had a wise choice been 
made, had Christ been received as he was given, had 
he been crowned as king, or welcomed as Messiah, 
whatever might have become of Him as the great 
sacrifice of the world, Jerusalem would have remained 
the imperial city of the globe, and her court would 
have been forever the centre of the royal gentry of 
the earth. She rejected the Messiah, and decay and 
destruction ensued ! 

France had a choice set before her people near the 
close of the last half century. The atrocities of the 
Bourbon monarchs ; the black history of the Bastile ; 
the wild outbreak of the revolution which swept away 
altar and throne, nobles and priests; the wars of Na- 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 13 

poleon, and the peaceful reign of the House of Or- 
leans, had ripened France for liberty ; opened before 
her the gates of national emancipation, and brought 
her to the borders of a political millennium. But she 
did not know her hour. She rejected the blessing, 
pushed back the boon of liberty, and to-day, holding 
in her hand an outraged constitution, and hugging 
to her bosom a code of violated laws, she quivers be- 
neath the iron heel of a perjured emperor, waiting 
for another hour like that she cast away. 

Rome had the choice presented to her in 1848. 
She had become weary of the tyranny of the Vatican. 
Ages of midnight and mountains of burden had been 
gradually upheaved by tha throes of public sentiment, 
and the eternal city was ripe for a broader civilization, 
and a purer Christianity. Like her neighbor, Vesu- 
vius, Rome was stirred and rocked by the action of 
unquenchable, internal fires. A strange soul-cry of 
freedom sounded over the Seven Hills, and went roll- 
ing across the dreary campagna. The Quirinal 
was besieged by Roman legions ; the affrighted 
pontiff fled in the jacket of a Bavarian slave ; the 
college of cardinals was dispersed ; the Swiss Guards 
hid their fantastic uniform for fear, and Rome had 

offered to her a citizenship such as tribunes, lictors, 
2 



14 YOUNG MAN'S FKIEND. 

and senators never dreamed of. Had she accepted it, 
she would at this moment have been the capital of an 
Italian empire that would have won the admiration of 
the world. A free press would now be flooding the 
whole peninsula, where broods midnight darkness, 
with information; railroads would have gridironed 
the campagna, and steamers would have stirred the 
waters of the Tiber ; the Capitoline would have be- 
come the seat of a brilliant court, and the Corso would 
have been crowded with the princely aristocracy of 
the world ; Christ crucified would have been preached 
in St. Peter's, and a living Christianity would have 
begun to flourish on the graves of the martyrs, and 
amid the tombs of the apostles. But Koine re- 
jected the boon, and in 1850 welcomed back her 
tyrant, and sat down for another long and dreary 
night of superstition and oppression. 

This country had a choice presented in the trying 
days of the Revolution. The persecutions of the 
Puritans in England, the Dutch exile, the stormy, 
wintry voyage of the Mayflower, the whole transac- 
tion of Plymouth Rock, the early Indian wars, the 
strufflcs with the British crown, the conflicts with 

DO 

prejudice, superstition, and ignorance, educated the 
people for the crisis. National independence was the 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 15 

boon offered by Providence. Political freedom was 
the blessing held out. Had our fathers mistaken the 
hour, years of vassalage to the mother country, with 
a long, lasting paralysis to national greatness would 
have been our history. To-day we might have been 
subjects of " Her gracious Majesty, the Queen, " and 
the British flag might now be waving over Faneuil 
Hall and Plymouth Rock. 

Another choice was set before us four years ago. 
The nation had marched up through an unprecedented 
prosperity and growth to another,crisis in its being. 
The boon held out was, liberty to all the inhabitants 
of the land ; the dissolution of caste ; the ennoblement 
of labor ; freedom, with a better civilization, new 
ideas of the equality of man, new conceptions of the 
purposes of national existence, and new guarantees 
for the safety of human life. 

That crisis is now upon the people of America. It 
did not begin when Beauregard's cannon thundered 
against Sumter, nor did it end when Richmond fell, 
i and Lee surrendered. It is a crisis which has come 
upon a whole generation, that will run parallel with 
the whole existing race. The brutal coarseness with 
which Senator Douglas trampled down the remon- 
strance of three thousand New England clergymen of 



16 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 

all sects, against the passage of the infamous Kansas- 
Nebraska bill ; the wanton repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise over the graves of Clay and Webster, 
its giant advocates ; the barbarous assault of Preston 
Brooks upon Senator Sumner in the Federal Senate 
Chamber ; the murder of Lovejoy at Alton ; the slow, 
lingering torture of Torrey, the martyr of Baltimore ; 
the passage*of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the humil- 
iation of Massachusetts by the rendition of Anthony 
Burns under it ; were as surely parts of it, as were 
the bloody scenes of Manassas, or the assassination of 
Abraham Lincoln. The crisis is still upon us. One 
crash of thunder has rolled by, one bolt of lightning 
has gone scathing, withering, and blasting across the 
continent, but the storm is not over. 

We have heard the shout of victory, as it rocked 
the land from the Penobscot to the bay of California ; 
we have seen every city illuminated from Belfast to 
San Francisco, but the moral conflict is not over. Our 
soldiers have come home with death-broken ranks, 
and bullet-riddled battle-flags, but the war of ideas, 
in which every blow has been struck rages still, ay, 
and will rage, according to a blind prophet, whom 
God for once allowed to speak the truth in his mad- 
ness, " until the last of the present generation has 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 17 

died in the track," and transmitted the conflict, with 
all its fearful issues to posterity. The reformer or 
the politician who supposes that the conflict is ended, 
the crisis passed, must have a horoscope that takes 
in but few of the figures painted on the sky. True, 
the sword has done its work. It entered the strife 
as a brief and bloody actor. It fulfilled its mission 
and returned to the scabbard. The college, the press, 
the forum, the ballot-box, the pulpit, are all to have 
a part in the conflict. It will yet be proved that 
" the pen is mightier than the sword," and that ideas 
are more omnipotent than salvos of artillery. A 
whole generation will be consumed in the settlement 
of the issues of this war, and the questions which 
grow out of them, and until they are settled every 
day will be big with momentous events, and every 
moment clothed with fearful responsibilities. 

And this leads to the announcement of the theme 
of the present Lecture. 

THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 

The Hour ! The age we live in ! The momen- 
tous crisis of national being ! In the history of our 
race, there have been periods of very slow growth, 
very gradual development. The world seemed to be 
2* 



18 



a great globe of dormant, unconscious, unprogressive 
matter. A whole age was needed for a single 
change. A hundred and twenty years were occupied 
in building one ship without mast or sail or steam, 
to bear one family across the flood from the gates of 
Eden to Mount Ararat ! Forty years were con- 
sumed in a single journey from the shores of the 
Red Sea to the banks of the Jordan ! There was 
little progress, and man stumbled along the dormant 
ages. A whole century was needed to fill up one 
brief parchment page of history. The race slowly 
drifted down by the flood, the exodus, the establish- 
ment of monarchy, the various captivities, the build- 
ing and destruction of the Temple, and the crucifix- 
ion of Christ, into the mobility of the Christian era. 
And even this warm gulf stream did not quicken 
mankind to any new activity. Humanity seemed 
like a drifting ship for seventeen hundred years after 
Christ came. Changes were slowly wrought ; events 
tardily lagged, improvements were few, science 
seemed to be under the ban of a despot whose chains 
no power could break, and from whose dismal dun- 
geons none could escape. 

But we live in no such age as that. The long 
midnight has been broken by an earthquake's shock, 



THE HOUR AND THE MAX. 19 

the reign of inactivity is over ; the dungeon doors of 
science have been broken down, and she sits enthroned 
upon the top of the mountains, and from pole to pole 
the world is wi(Je awake. Look abroad and see what 
men are doing ! Blazing across continents with 
steeds of fire that breathe steam from their nostrils ! 
Laying cables in the sea that merchant princes may 
speak to each other three thousand miles apart with- 
out rising from their desks ! Navigating the ocean 
with huge, floating hotels, that move against wind 
and tide three hundred miles a day without sail or 
oar ! Stupendously grand is this our age in its 
activities. The nations of the earth seem to have 
broken from a long, death-like sleep, and started to 
an intensity of action. 

But it is in our own land that the mightiest 
changes are taking place, and here the greatest inter- 
est centres. Step by step this nation has been 
ascending an elevation on which no nation ever stood 
before. Since the opening of the civil war, the eyes 
of mankind have been resting on the giant Republic 
of the West. Never before did an internal war draw 
such universal attention. When Sumter fell, earth's 
ends felt the shock. Blood had not been flowing six 
months when the mills in Lancashire shut down and 



20 YOUNG man's friend. 

the shops in Birmingham closed. American matters 
were discussed in the British Parliament, and in the 
French Assembly. Our successes or reverses were 
telegraphed by lightning to Vienna and St. Peters- 
burg, while the mighty issues were pondered as 
earnestly on the shores of the Bosphorus and on the 
banks of the Tiber as in New York and Philadelphia. 
Everything indicates that our land is to be the theatre 
of convulsions for a few years to come, that will 
astonish the world. Agencies are at work which are 
sure to upheave the whole surface of society. Prin- 
ciples are mustering for a conflict such as has never 
agitated any nation. Ideas are moving the public 
mind to revolutions of opinion, which will create 
vast moral and political changes. 

Immediately before us are some short, sharp, severe 
struggles. A conflict of the Federal Government 
with the pernicious ideas of State Sovereignty seems 
inevitable. The doctrine of State Sovereignty, as 
against the General Government, must be blotted out, 
for that doctrine lies at the basis of all our national 
trouble. How can a State be sovereign with no right 
to coin money, negotiate treaties, or declare war? 
In the voluntary abandonment of rights essential to 
sovereignty, the States in entering the Federal Union 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 21 

abandoned the fact itself. To save posterity from 
another war, and to prevent other ages from being 
blasted with woe and deluged with blood, this mis- 
chievous idea must be rooted out. 

The political status of the negro is to be settled. 
His liberty is secured. The Proclamation of Eman- 
cipation issued on the first day of 1863, secured legal 
freedom to every slave ; the surrender of the confed- 
erate army, and the breaking up of the Rebellion, 
made that proclamation a living, practical fact. But 
what is the negro to be in the future ? A chattel or 
a man ? A serf or a citizen ? Ignorant or educated ? 
A tool, to be used by ambitious demagogues, a beast 
driven to his task, or -equal before the law with his 
whiter brother? The negro emancipated, but left 
without the rights of citizenship, to be buffeted by 
circumstances, hunted out of railway carriages, shut 
up in the corner of a gallery in a city church, where 
Christ is preached at one end of the edifice and cruci- 
fied at the other, driven away from the ballot-box 
after having fought at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, 
Chickamauga and Atlanta, Petersburg and Rich- 
mond, while the fresh importations from Ireland, 
Italy, and Germany are allowed to vote before they 
can read the name upon the printed ballot, — the 



22 young man's fkiend. 

negro, emancipated and thus left, an anomaly in the 
Republic, with all the doors to wealth, respectability, 
honor, and station closed against him, has secured a 
blessing hardly worth thanking God for ! It was 
included in the Proclamation of Emancipation, and 
it is written in God's purpose, that the negro shall be 
a man, having all the rights and privileges of men. 
It is an idea worthy of the hour. The age receives 
a dignity beyond all other ages, to which is committed 
the work of lifting up a besotted race of five millions 
of human beings, to manhood, to womanhood, and 
citizenship. 

A contest with that religio-political power, known 
as the Church of Rome, is pending ! The hour can- 
not be far distant when a united Protestantism will 
be arrayed against an undivided Catholicism. In 
the contest the stake will be — America. A gigan- 
tic power, that has longer arms and sharper claws than 
slavery, hugs the base of the Temple of Liberty, ready 
to rise at any moment and overthrow the goddess. 
The system, that grinds unhappy Ireland into the 
dust, and crushes her with a tyrant's heel ; that makes 
Rome and Naples what they are ; that has spread the 
pall of death over Spain and Portugal ; that has been 
an incubus upon the German States ; that has begot- 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 23 

ten infidelity in France ; that is now surging against 
the British throne, has a foothold, and is a recognized 
power in the United States. When the secret history 
of the war is written, it will be found that since the 
peace edict of Pius IX. in 1843, directed alike to 
Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, the Church 
of Rome in America has acknowledged allegiance to 
a potentate, whose claims are held superior to those of 
the Republic. Without referring to the ever unva- 
rying history of Rome, or to her constant, unequiv- 
ocal teachings, her present attitude fills us with 
alarm. She menaces the Republic, and a contest 
with her seems inevitable. 

The increase of infidelity ; the disrespect for the 
Bible, the Sabbath, and the sanctuary; the constant 
disregard for the claims of religion, the increase of 
crime, and the alarming prevalence of vice, all make 
the hour in which we live a momentous one. I 
speak of them now, not as a teacher of religion, but 
as a citizen of the United States. A Republic can 
be maintained only in an educated and virtuous com- 
munity. The problem of self-government is not yet 
fully solved ; the nation is yet on trial ! We have 
had a popular idea that if the country could stand 
the convulsions of civil war, it could stand forever 



24 young man's friend. 

against any convulsion. But there are greater ene- 
mies to a Republic than treason and war. This 
nation can better stand foreign invasion, civil war, 
and domestic insurrection, than it can resist igno- 
rance, bigotry, public debauchery, and general immo- 
rality. Our Government must rest, not on a strong 
central power, not on a large standing army, not on 
an iron-clad navy, not on formidable fortifications, — 
though at times all these may be necessary, — but on 
the intelligence, purity, and piety of the people ; 
crime, irreligion, and infidelity have a political bearing. 
They touch the common weal and jeopardize the 
nation. 

Such then are some of the limnings of the hour 
in which we live. The citizen of no country was 
ever called to face responsibilities such as fall on us. 
There never has been an hour in the world's history, 
nor any land beneath the sun, in which a man of 
ordinary mental and moral powers could achieve so 
much for himself, for the nation, and for God ! 

And what is wanted in this hour of crisis and 
revolution ? What is needed to meet the demands of 
the age? Political integrity? Yes, and something 
more! University scholarship? Yes, and some- 
thing more! An untrammelled press? Yes, and 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 25 

something more ! A free church, and a true pulpit? 
Yes, and something more ! A stable government, and 
a strong executive ? Yes, and something more ! The 
great want of this nation is manhood, — enlightened, 
educated, inspired Christian character ! Who is it 
that must direct the energies of the present age ; 
control the surging waves of mind ; settle the ele- 
ments of public commotion ; confer on humanity its 
just rights ; dispute the advance of antichrist ; sweep 
back the floods of infidelity and crime ; — who, under 
God, is to do all this ? The warrior, with garments 
rolled in blood? No, the man ! The politician, with 
his petty schemes of personal aggrandizement? No, 
the man ! The merchant, swollen with the riches of 
every clime? No, the man! The scholar, bending 
beneath the adornments of classic literature and 
intellectual culture? No, the man! The diplomate, 
with musty compromises, and impracticable treaties? 
No, the man ! Above everything else, we need 
manly character, which implies all that party, school, 
and church can give us. The age and the hour want 
everything that God included in man. 

Under God, every man makes himself. Whatever 
books and teachers, colleges and universities may do 
for him, he must be his own architect. Those grand 
3 



26 YOUNG man's friend. 

facilities can only help him make himself, help him 
shape his own destiny. 

Work bestowed upon a block of lifeless marble 
transforms it into a piece of exquisite sculpture ! 
Work bestowed upon a blank, rough, ragged-edged 
canvas, will breathe into it the Madonna's saintly 
beauty ! Work laid out on acres of rough, stony, 
barren land, will clothe the stones with flowers, and 
hang the ledges with luscious fruit ! Work put into 
pits of clay, and quarries of stone, and forests of 
oak, will convert them into gorgeous cathedrals, royal 
palaces, mammoth warehouses, and elegant dwellings ! 
Why, the bell that calls us every Sabbath day to the 
sanctuary, with brazen melody, was once a lump of 
meaningless metal in the cold earth ! The parts of 
which the great organ of Fryburg is composed were 
once nothing but chips of wood and bits of lead ! 
The brilliant jets of gaslight, with which cities are 
illuminated when empires surrender, are wrung out 
of the black, earth-covered coal ! Work expended 
on human nature, makes men. Work, not l)art- 
mouth College, made Daniel Webster. Work, not 
the stone quarries of Cromarty, made Hugh Miller. 
Accidents of birth, fortunate circumstances, and 
special providences, often place men in positions for 



THE HOUE AND THE MAN. 27 

remarkable self-development. Indeed, some men owe 
their elevation to fortunate circumstances, and not to 
any inherent worth or ability , yet it remains true that 
men generally make of themselves what they choose 
in this life. They can be coarse stones in the quarry, 
unhewn, unfashioned, unused, or they can be pol- 
ished stones in the temple of human society or 
living statues in the gallery of human fame and 
honor. 

And this brings me to my second point. 

THE MAN THE MAN FOR THE HOUR. 

Keeping especially in view the young men whom I 
address, and to whom this Lecture belongs, let me 
spend a little while in the enumeration of the ele- 
ments of that character which is needed to meet the 
wants of the age. 

I. Muscle, — or physical development. — You 
smile, perhaps, as I mention muscle as an element 
of the manhood needed by our times. Most persons 
regard physical power as belonging alone to the 
sensual, the animal, the brutish. When you speak 
of muscular development, they think of Heenan, 
Morrissey, and Sullivan, knights of the ring. But as 



28 YOUNG man's friend. 

we are building a column of character, it is well- 
young men, to start with the earthworks down below. 
What mudsills are to a building, muscular develop- 
ment is to manhood. Muscular development implies 
obedience to the laws of nature, and on it, to a much 
greater extent than men suppose, depend happiness 
in life, and usefulness among men. The reason 
why so many men of fine intellectual powers fail in 
life, the reason why so often the best scholars in the 
class are never heard of after they leave college, is 
because the physical constitution is a shattered wreck. 
They have brain enough for great thoughts and great 
plans, but no power to execute. 

You have seen a huge steam-engine, built to lift 
the waters of a mighty river, and pour them down 
in ten thousand refreshing streams through the 
crowded city below. Its shaft is immense, its wheels 
are ponderous, its machinery grandly intricate. 
That engine is set in solid masonry. Huge blocks of 
granite, cemented masses of stone, thick walls of 
brick and heavy bars of iron, hold it in its place. And 
then it does its work safely, grandly. But set that 
engine in a frail wooden frame ; take away the ma- 
sonry, and cast up around it a light, beautiful, airy 
scaffolding, and how soon it will all be shaken to 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 29 

pieces, and racked asunder, and the noble engine it- 
self become a mass of ruins. 

So you have seen a noble intellect in a physical 
organization broken by disease, enervated by vice, 
emasculated by improvidence, — a brain like that 
of Webster, Bacon, Locke, or Newton, set in a body 
that only holds together day by day with the coaxings 
of the nurse and the nostrums of the druggist. Set 
such a brain to work and it will soon rack the body 
to pieces. Start the fires of such an intellect, and 
the moment the wheels begin to revolve, the setting 
will begin to crumble. You must stop the action of 
the brain to save the body; you must keep your 
mental machinery quiet to save the physical setting. 
If you have a steam-engine that you do not design 
to use, that you never intend to set in motion, you 
might as w^ell set it in plaster as in granite ; but if you 
wish to use it, develop its tremendous energy, you 
must set it in solid masonry. So if you have a 
brain which you wish to use for immense achieve- 
ments, for heroic endeavors, for manly action, you 
must have it set, not in a bed of stiffened muscles nor 
in a framework of shattered nerves, but in the solid 
oak of temperate habits, in the iron brass and granite 
of muscular development ; and then run it according 
to the well-defined laws of God and nature. 



30 YOUNG man's friend. 

All men admit that health is a blessing ! A bless- 
ing ! ! It is almost a Christian grace. A well-devel- 
oped physical organization, — health founded on tem- 
perance in eating and drinking, uninjured by bad 
habits, un weakened by indulgence, is a virtue. 
Health secured by an obedience to the laws of nature 
has a moral quality. It is the lower course of granite 
blocks in the structure of manhood. 

Robert Pollok, a prince of Scottish bards, was 
gifted with a splendid intellect that had in it much of 
Cowper's sweetness and Milton's grandeur, but when, 
in the twenty-eighth year of his age, he had executed 
the " Course of Time," he had also exhausted the 
physical framework ; and sunk down into the grave in 
the same year that his immortal work was given to 
the world. That one effort shattered the whole phy- 
sical framework of life. 

Henry Kirke White aimed at the higher honors of 
Cambridge ; he plumed himself for a lofty flight, but 
just as he had touched the pinnacle of his ambition, 
nature gave way. He had burned himself out with 
one single conflagration of intellectual fires. 

"Unconquered powers the immortal mind displayed, 
But worn with anxious thought the frame decayed ; 
Pale, o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired, 
The martyr-student faded, and — expired." 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 31 

II. Bkain, — or mental power. — One step 
higher. A few years ago the impression prevailed 
that learning must be confined to professional men, 
and most people were content to let others do their 
thinking and reasoning for them. Even in these 
days of books, lectures f newspapers, schools, and 
pulpits, the masses are content to depend on others 
for their ideas. Some are too busy to think, some 
too heedless, some too lazy. Many young men are 
satisfied if they can write a clear hand, compose a 
tolerable business letter, cast a column of figures, 
and discuss the last monetary articles in the daily 
paper. They have little ambition beyond these 
slender attainments, and are satisfied if they know 
enough to manage business, make money, and grow 
rich. The higher walks of literature, the grander 
fields of knowledge, they care not to tread. 

And others are content with the knowledge of one 
particular profession. Young men graduate and 
study law, medicine, or theology, and when they 
have mastered, to an orthodox standard, one pro- 
fession, they call themselves educated. But the edu- 
cation is often narrow, superficial, and false. Often 
the educated physician cannot write a will, draw a 
deed, form a contract, execute a mortgage, expound a 



32 YOUNG man's friend. 

law principle, or explain a law term. The clergyman 
is sometimes as ignorant of medical science, as the 
physician is of law. He does not know the aorta 
from the diaphragm, the vertebra from the epiglottis. 
The lawyer is often ignorant of both theology and 
physic, and all three of them, proficient in their own 
professions, know nothing about the simplest processes 
of common every day life. Such men are not edu- 
cated, except as some precocious boy is educated, who 
has a wonderful aptitude for mathematics, • which 
absorbs and swallows up all the rest of the faculties. 

The learned theological professor, who, wishing to 

• 

dispose of the limb of a tree that shaded his study 
window, mounted, and sat astride the branch, sawing 
between himself and the giant trunk, until limb, 
leaves, and professor came sprawling to the ground; 
and the eminent author, himself a living walking 
encyclopedia, who, being sent to the pasture for a 
cow which his practical wife had purchased in his 
absence, drove home a stately ox, are the repre- 
sentatives of a class of men who are educated in 
one direction, while to the rest of life they are 
strangers. How trifling a part of human knowledge 
is Law or Physic? How small a fraction of the 
soul's capacity for learning are the themes and 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 33 

formulas of theology? What an insignificant sum 
of knowledge is any one branch of study ? What a 
bare trifle a university education is compared with 
all a man ought to know ? What a little thing is a 
shopkeeper, a farmer, a student, a physician, a 
lawyer, a preacher, compared with all A man ought 
to be? 

In these times, when so many facilities exist for 
acquiring knowledge, there is no excuse for igno- 
rance, and no man can expect to be a power in the 
world who does not develop his intellect to the 
fullest capacity. Poverty constitutes no bar to learn- 
ing. Many a man who has ascended the highest 
pinnacles of influence, learned his letters by the pale 
beams of the moon, or by the flickering light of a 
log fire. Physical infirmity is not a barrier to men- 
tal improvement ; Homer and Milton were blind. 
Lowly circumstances cannot repress mental en- 
deavors ; -ZEsop was a humpbacked slave. A late 
president of our chief University was a poor friendless 
boy who knew not his father or his mother, and who, 
when the hand of charity found him, had no friend 
on earth. The age is an age of brain. Its power 
is seen and felt everywhere. What lifted Nathaniel 
P. Banks out of a New England bobbin shop, to 



34 YOUNG man's friend. 

the speakership in the congress of 1854? Brain 
worked. What took George N. Briggs out of a 
hatter's shop and seated him in the gubernatorial chair 
of the old Bay State? Brain cultivated. What 
brought Abraham Lincoln from the swamps of 
Illinois to the White House? Brain employed. 
What elevated Andrew Johnson from a tailor's board 
to the highest position in America? Brain developed. 
Our country is full of illustrations of the power of 
brain. What led Ben Franklin from a # printer's 
press to the courts of kings? What transferred 
Roger Sherman from the cobbler's bench to the 
halls of congress ? Those men are sublime illustra- 
tions of the power of mind to lift a man above the 
slough of ignorance and poverty, into which Nature 
or Providence threw him at his birth. And the 
young man must understand, that, in college or out 
of college, in a profession or in a trade, that the 
cultivation of his mind is the absolute necessity of 
the day and the hour. Money may have power; 
birth and blood may have power; but brain is 
mightier than all. 

Mark the influence of one mind on society for good 
or evil ! For years, a highly gifted speaker stood 
upon the platform of Boston Music Hall, a neglected 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 35 

outcast from all ecclesiastical establishments, a man 
without any religious relationships, a philosopher 
repudiated by all the universities, a preacher against 
whom all the pulpits were closed, a reformer from 
whom Christians shrunk aghast at his impiety. But 
until his sun went down in the moaning waters of 
death, he had more influence, or seemed to have 
(probably the latter), than a dozen of the other 
religious teachers of the metropolis combined. The 
young men .of Boston sat at his feet. The youth, 
the beauty, the chivalry of Trimount crowded Music 
Hall. He magnetized them with some irresistible, 
electric charm; held their hearts, and their con- 
sciences, and their faith in his hand; covering them 
with awe, or arousing them to passion. It was not 
the power of truth, for he stood like a weird giant 
on the dark mountains of unbelief ! It was not the 
Athenian finish of his oratory, for he was in bodily 
presence weak, and in speech contemptible ! It was 
not the polish and suavity of his manners, for he was 
magnificent mostly in his curses ! It was brain, — 
brain seizing the heart, the constiLuce, the intellect, 
and swaying society until church and state felt the 
mighty surge, and Christian men, who bewailed his 
influence, knelt down in the chapel of the Old South, 



36 YOUNG man's friend. 

Church, and prayed that he might be converted or 
taken out of the world ! Such is the power of brain 
when wielded for the cause of error. 

HI. Force, or energy of character. — Brain is a 
powerful, all-perfect steam-engine ; muscle is the 
solid masonry in which it is set. Force is the steam 
which puts all its wheels in motion, causes all its 
shafts to turn, and all its parts to act in harmony. 
The engine may be perfect, the masonry secure, but 
if there is no steam, the machine is motionless. 
Long ago it was settled that a man could not move 
his age without force. The time of pensioned lazi- 
ness is passed ; the reign of titled indolence is 
over. The hour demands activity, vigilance, and 
force. Some of our best-educated men fail utterly 
in life because they are unable to keep pace with the 
march of the times. Gifted by nature, they have 
not activity enough to keep up with a restless, pro- 
gressive world. The work of the world is not done 
by the most finished men, nor by the most gifted, but 
by the men of force. Who have been the most suc- 
cessful generals in the army ? Men of force ! Who 
have risen from the humblest stations in life to fill the 
senate and control the legislation of the land ? Men 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 37 

of force ! Who conduct the potential press ? Men 
of force ! Who move the minds of men from the 
pulpit, — a place higher than a throne? Men of 
force ! 

You can account for much of the failure in life 
from a want of force, — want of motive fire, — brain 
steam. There is intellect enough drifting unused 
down the stream of life to start a dead universe to 
mental action, should it be employed. I have a 
friend, a clergyman, who has mastered universities 
and been titled by them, who converses in dead and 
living dialects, who has garnered knowledge like 
grain of the Autumn, until the granaries are full, 
but who has never touched the public heart, roused 
the public conscience, nor set on fire the public mind. 
He is a living absurdity, drifting along uselessly, and 
doing nothing for the world because he has no force. 
Give that brain of his to some other man, and he 
would startle the globe with his powers ! Give that 
intellect to a man of force, and he would make all 
Christendom brighter for his having lived. You must 
have wind for the sails of that vessel ! You must 
have steam for that huge locomotive ! You must 
have electricity for that telegraphic wire ! So you 
must have enthusiasm for the soul of man. Without 
4 



38 young man's friend. 

it the brightest genius may live to threescore years 
and ten, and all that time be rusting out, moulding 
away, — the most abject life a man can live, — doing 
nothing. 

You remember the story of Robert Brace's spider, 
the insect he saw stretching its web in the grotto 
where he had hidden from his pursuers. Well, many 
a blood-royal prince, many a power-proud king, who 
lived no longer ago than that, is utterly forgotten, 
while that spider is well remembered ; and I say to 
every young man, that he had better imitate an ener- 
getic, industrious, persevering spider, than be an 
indolent, thriftless, lazy king. 

IY. Mettle, or aptness of spirit to the occasion. 
— It includes moral courage, and is one of the most 
essential elements of success and usefulness. There 
are men of muscle, brain, and force, who never meet 
a crisis, and who are never equal to the spirit of a 
great occasion. They are prodigious men, if never 
taken by surprise. But if an emergency comes, they 
know not how to meet it, and before they recover 
themselves, the opportunity is gone. Our age is one 
of surprises, emergencies. Men must make prece- 
dents instead of following them. There come times 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 39 

in the lives of all men, when action must be taken 
without a moment's delay, with but an instant for 
consideration. Gigantic issues must be met im- 
promptu. Colossal questions must be answered 
without hesitation. 

The man of mettle will act, while he who has not 
this quality will hesitate, and events will march 
grandly on, and leave him standing in a deserted 
track like a pillar of salt between Sodom and Zoar. 

For want of mettle, Louis Philippe lost his throne. 
A mob gathered in the streets of Paris, and came 
howling toward the Tuileries, around which were 
drawn up the National Guards. " Shall I fire ? " asked 
the general commanding. The king hesitated. 6 ' One 
volley will disperse the mob," urged the officers of 
the government. Still the king hesitated. Soon 
the gardens of the palace were filled with an excited 
crowd. Hoarse curses came up from beneath into 
the royal ears. The clangor of arms was heard 
upon the marble doorsteps. " You may fire now," 
said the king. " Too late, sire," was the stern 
answer. " The soldiers are exchanging their arms 
with the people." Louis Philippe, the grand un- 
fortunate, fled from his palace in disguise, his family 
were trampled beneath the feet of the mob in Eue 



40 YOUNG man's friend. 

de Rivoli, and the House of Orleans was swept 
from power forever. 

You remember that on one occasion the mettle of 
one man saved the army of the Shenandoah. 
Surprised and overwhelmed, that army was broken to 
pieces by the Rebel hordes of Jubal Early. . Vet- 
eran ranks broke and fled. Cannon was left to be 
used by the onrushing foe. Battle-flags fell from 
dying hands into the grasp of the vandals. Muskets, 
cartridge-boxes, and knapsacks were cast away in the 
flight. The stars and stripes trailed in the dust, and 
the confederate rag waved aloft. Sheridan, at Win- 
chester, twenty miles away, heard the roar of battle. 
Springing to his saddle, he plunged his rowels deep 
into his horse's sides. The noble animal, superior to 
many things called men, seemed to feel the magnitude 
of the hour, went leaping along the road, bearing 
Sheridan. Farm houses looked like specks by the 
roadside ; his staff was all left behind. Grandly he 
swept by everything until he met his broken columns 
in full retreat. He halted them, reorganized them, 
inspired them, turned them upon the foe, and poured 
them upon the pursuing victors until they broke and 
fled. The Rebel flag went down wet with the blood 
of the standard-bearer. The crimson stripes and 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 41 

golden stars went up again, and when the sun of 
another morning shone upon that royal ensign, the 
Shenandoah was forever purged of the leprous in- 
truders. But for the mettle of one single man, the 
Shenandoah Valley would have been to the American 
people, like the plains of Manassas, another Golgotha. 

In July of 1865 several wretched persons, among 
them a woman, were convicted of conspiring to 
murder Abraham Lincoln. The death-warrant was 
put into the hands of Andrew Johnson, in the 
providence of God the President, for his official 
signature. The circumstances of the case were 
sufficient to try the mettle of the man. The air was 
full of the spirit of assassination. Ecclesiastical 
arrogance and public prejudice threw sheltering arms 
around the most guilty of the criminals. The ex- 
ecution of a woman was an unusual event, and few 
believed that the most wicked of the wretched com- 
pany of the condemned would be hung. But the 
President dared be just. His executive sanction was 
given to the death-warrant, and in twenty-four hours 
the conspirators were dangling in the air, a hanging 
manifesto of national retribution. The unflinching 
determination, the Spartan promptitude, mark the 
mettle of the head of the Eepublic. 

Let me give an instance in humbler life. In 



42 YOUNG man's friend. 

1850 the Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the 
American Congress. It was an act that made it a 
crime against the Government for a man to shelter a 
fugitive, or even give him a cup of cold water, in 
his flight to the protection of the British flag. It 
hung pains and penalties at the door of humanity, 
and made Mercy a crime punishable with fines and 
imprisonments. Andover, speaking with the voice 
of Moses Stuart, said, '" The law must be obeyed." 
The statesmanship of the land, uttering itself through 
Daniel Webster on the 7th of March, said, " The law- 
must be obeyed." The pulpit through its most aged 
and renowned ministers, said, "The law must be 
obeyed." The people, overawed by the momentous 
excitement, and settling down into law-abiding qui- 
escence, said, "The law must be obeyed." But as 
the cruel terms of that act went across the land, a 
humble man in Boston, an officer of a Baptist church, 
sent to the public papers a sublime protest, declaring 
that his house was open, his loaf of bread and cup 
of water ready, for the refugee. Not Babylon, 
where Daniel prayed with his windows open toward 
Jerusalem ; not Dura's plain, where the three Hebrew 
princes stood erect amid the bowing multitudes, 
beheld a nobler illustration of spirit aftd manhood 
than that. 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 43 

V. Conscience, or moral sense. — Intellect, with- 
out conscience, is like a locomotive without an en- 
gineer, driving over the track with lightning velocity, 
amid appalling dangers. Great genius, without prin- 
ciple, is like thunderbolts in the hands of a madman. 
The world has everything to fear, and little to hope 
from intellect without conscience. The more intel- 
lectual power a man has, the more tremendous be- 
comes his influence for evil, and the more reason the 
world has to fear his pestiferous power. What sad 
raids on the happiness of mankind have been made by 
men of brain without principle. What conflagra- 
tions have been kindled and what wasting woes pro- 
duced by mind without conscience. Better for the 
world if Voltaire had not been gifted with his brilliant 
genius, his matchless wit, his blasting satire ! Bet- 
ter that Paine had never been endowed with intellect 
to write the " Age of Reason!" Better if Renan 
had been incapable of producing his " View of 
Jesus." 

Great intellect without principle is a fearful power 
in any community, as the last four years have painful- 
ly illustrated. A few ambitious men of brain, high 
culture, and strong will, but uncontrolled by con- 
science, plunged this whole nation into civil war; 



44 young man's friend. 

dyed all our rivers with fratricidal blood, burdened the 
nation with a monstrous national debt, of which the 
last man now living shall feel the pressure, swept 
away a million men, filled the land with widows and 
orphans, and made the continent an Aceldama. 

In a country like ours, where a man may be a sen- 
ator in Congress in a few months after leaving the 
fens and bogs of Ireland, or the vine-clad banks of 
the Rhine ; where a rail-splitter is as likely to be 
made President as the graduate of Waterville or 
Harvard ; where a tailor leaves his sign up over the 
door of his Western home, and reaches the White 
House, without a pilgrimage of forty years to get 
there ; where cabinet officers, Rear Admirals, and Lieu- 
tenant-Generals are made out of the most unpromising 
materials ; in a country where no rights of birth or 
blood are acknowledged, where the humblest citizen 
may aspire to the highest honors, and reach the highest 
station, — in such a country, alive with industry, 
fruitful in changes, mammoth in its strides of pros- 
perity, the necessity of a public conscience is fearfully 
apparent. Under a republican form of government, 
it is unsafe to trust any man with learning, office, 
or power, unless he is a conscientious man. Put a 
man with the conscience of Jefferson Davis into 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 45 

the presidential chair, and he will repudiate your 
national debt of millions of dollars. Elevate a man 
with the conscience of Alexander H. Stephens, and 
he will make human bondage the corner-stone of the 
Republic. Fill Congress with such men as Brooks and 
Keitt, and they will make pistols, bowie knives, and 
bludgeons the arguments of statesmen. Conscience, 
public conscience, conscience in the presidency, in the 
Cabinet, and in Congress, ay, and among the people 
too, — among the bankers, merchants, mechanics, and 
laborers of the nation, — is the imperative need to save 
us from repudiation, from unjust legislation, from 
civil discord and subsequent ruin. 

This land owes more to the conscientiousness of 
George Washington, than to his military genius or 
his statesmanship. The best and noblest part of 
Abraham Lincoln was his conscience. It influenced 
his whole administration. It swayed all the move- 
ments of that humbly great man through four painful 
years. It breathed out from every annual message, 
and echoed in every wayside speech. 

An educated, enlightened conscience is the great 
need of our land and age. Without it we are a 
ruined people. We may have commerce and manu- 
factures, armies and navies, colleges and churches, 



46 YOUNG man's friend. 

but without a public conscience our doom is sealed. 
Conscience will steady the Government, substitute 
negotiation for war, adjust the differences between 
North and South, East and West, and consolidate 
the union of States into one vast, indissoluble, Fed- 
eral fact. 

VI. Piety, or love of God. — I ask nobody's 
pardon for making religion an element of manly 
character, and I offer no apology for introducing it 
into any oration. We commenced building our col- 
umn of manly character down among the earthworks. 
Step by step we have come up to the summit. The 
capstone of human character is piety. Not cant, 
that whines and says its prayers and then steals its 
neighbor's purse, or stabs its neighbor's reputation ; 
not bigotry, that bows at Christ's altar, with Christ's 
great name upon its lips, and then goes out to perse- 
cute Christ's disciples ; not a creed, that too often is 
but a string of sounding generalities ; not a litany, 
recited by lips all polluted with vices ; not a pro- 
fession, forty cartloads of which are not worth one 
honest, noble, pious act ; not a sacrament, that may be 
nothing but hollow mockery ; but a religion of soul 
and life, which makes a man doubly human, and yet 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 47 

which lifts his nature up close to God. To make up 
a well-balanced, symmetrical character, a character 
that will meet the wants and emergencies of our 
times, a man must be a Christian. We may not 
quite agree with a learned Andover professor, that a 
man who reads the New Testament in Greek and 
does not become a Calvinist, is not a respectable man, 
but can we fail to agree that true, exalted manhood, 
is not attained until piety becomes an element of it, 
enters in to balance and perfect it. I need not say 
how defective that manhood is which denies the sove- 
reignty of Jehovah in the universe ; which repudi- 
ates the Law written by God on Sinai, and the morals 
taught by Christ in tJalilee ; that stands apart, an 
indifferent spectator to the greatest event in which 
human nature has ever had a part, — the crucifixion ; 
that scorns all the ties which bind man to angel and 
archangel, cherubim and seraphim, the hierarchy of 
the skies, the courtly gentry of the great family of 
intelligences. 

You have seen a house or a palace with its win- 
dows, doors, and courts all opening on one side, the 
edifice blank and inaccessible on the other. An 
educated, virtuous, successful man, without the higher 
element of character, is like that residence. Every 



48 YOUNG man's fkiend. 

look is toward the earth, every door and window of 
his being opens out toward his fellow-men. The por- 
tals are ever closed against heaven's sunshine* The 
whole man is bent over toward the earth. But when 
the highest, broadest element of character is secured, 
windows and doors are cut in the other side of his 
being, — windows that look out toward heaven, 
doors that let in the visits of the angels, and pas- 
sages down which comes the Lord of life himself, to 
be a constant guest. The earthside windows are not 
closed, but the heavenward ones are opened. He 
has no less to do with the humanities of earth, but 
more to do with the divinity of heaven. The man's 
character becomes round, full, rotund, perfect. 

But I must close. The young men who enter 
active life now, go forth to a noble work. The 
actor in the scenes of this hour is honored with a 
mission such as has never been committed to the 
youth of any age or land before, since God made the 
world. There never was a time like this in which to 
live. TTe emerged, a little while ago, from a wast- 
ing, wrathful, civil war. Our nation had a baptism 
of blood, and a purification of fire, for its great mis- 
sion. Great black clouds, which filled the whole 



THE HOUE AXD THE MAX. 49 

horizon, have been swept away. The Eebellion. win 
was strongly entrenched, and boasted of its invinci- 
bility, has been broken to pieces. Die army : 
rthern Virginia, which baffled the subtlety and 
skill of McClellan, the dashing fury of noble Joe 
Hooker, the calm, stern bravery of the true-hearted 
Burnside, and the mad onslaughts of Pope, has been 
scattered to the winds, before the anfidtering perse- 
verance and endurance of one who, among the great 
generals of the world, takes his place higher than 
TTellington, beside Xapoleon, — Ulysses S. Grant. 
The capital of the Eebellion, the impregnable city of 
the Confederacy, has surrendered, and and--' 
orators from Boston, have harangued the people from 
the steps of Libby Prison. Charleston, the nest of 
treason, fell ; at the sound of the tramping army a 
hundred miles away, her inhabitants cried for mercy, 
and the negroes have sung the John Brown hallelujah 
in the streets of the brave Palmetto city. The gal- 
lant Sherman marched through the South, as through 
a deserted nation, his approach being the signal for 
flight or surrender. The whole length of the Missis- 
sippi, the giant of waters, is clear of Eebel pirates, 
and commerce sweeps its billows from sea to sea. 
The old flao*, — God bless it ! — has been hoisted 



50 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 

again over Sumter, and now waves in triumph 
from the Penobscot to the Gulf of Mexico, and the 
shouts of victory have rolled from the St. Lawrence 
to the Rio Grande. The heroes of the war are 
receiving the nation's gratitude. Wherever the silent, 
taciturn chief, crowned with the honors of Donelson, 
Vicksburg, and Eichmond, went, manhood, woman- 
hood, and childhood rose up to crown him with 
honors. The victor of Atlanta was welcomed by the 
generous outcry of the whole populace. The name 
of the dashing Sheridan awakened everywhere storms 
of enthusiasm, while the gallant Howard, the hero of 
Gettysburg, the Havelock of the war, returned to 
New England, with a single arm, but a double man- 
hood, to receive the praises of every loyal citizen. 

And while honor was being done to these, the 
leaders of the Rebellion met a deserved fate. Some 
of them escaped, to wander like Cain, fugitives and 
vagabonds on the earth. They went to Mexico, 
to roam like paupers around the walls of the Monte- 
zumas ; or to Europe, to be scorned, insulted, and 
starved at the feet of British aristocracy. Others 
came licking the dust from the feet of the Executive, 
suing for pardon, that they might live upon the 
soil which reared them, but which they outraged by 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 51 

their crimes. Others in prison, howled out their 
rage against God and man. The arch-traitor, over- 
taken by ruin at the foot of the altar, fled, — another 
" grand unfortunate." His senses forsook him, his 
manhood was lost, and decked in his wife's frock, 
and rigged in a woman's indescribable paraphernalia, 
he was taken, while running in his military boots 
for the last ditch, by a score of the soldiers w^hose 
comrades he had endeavored to starve in his pris- 
ons. He was taken through a country he had so 
lately ruled, but none conspired for his escape, nor 
did the hand of charity hold out to him a cup of 
water. He was taken to a dungeon to wait the hour 
of his fate, and final disgrace. 

On the tide of such results the nation started anew, 
— a free nation, a nation of mammoth extent, of 
boundless resources, of tremendous facilities. Who 
can look forward to the grandeur of the future with- 
out an unspoken awe ! Who can contemplate the 
openings of Providence without a thrill of exultant 
hope ! By the beginning of another century we shall 
doubtless have a population of one hundred million 
souls, speaking one language, subscribing to one 
constitution, marching under one flag. The Canadas, 
Mexico, and Cuba will then be States in the Federal 



52 young man's friend. 

Union. The stars and stripes will wave from the 
rocky abutments of Newfoundland to the Isthmus of 
Panama. Immigration will take place for a quarter 
of a century to come as we have never seen it before. 
European nations will behold an exodus such as has 
never been witnessed since the Hebrews went out of 
Egypt, and new issues in politics and religion will 
spring up, questions not now dreamed of will agitate 
the public mind, and events startling and momentous 
will transpire. Into this new nation the young of 
North America will go, armed with power for weal or 
woe. We all know that the minds that are to control 
the next quarter of a century, settle all the questions 
which will spring up, meet all the issues that shall 
present themselves, and give a future to this Republic, 
or sink it in the waves which are to dash against it, are 
now moulding in our colleges, schools, academies of 
art and science, ay, on our farms, and in our work- 
shops and manufactories. To form those minds aright 
is the delicate but responsible task of the university, 
the pulpit, the forum, the press, and the fireside. To 
make men for the hour is the grand business of all 
popular education. To fashion an enlarged and ele- 
vated manhood is the work of the philosopher, the 
moralist, the ecclesiastic, and the preacher. 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 53 

You will go, young men, to engage in a life strug- 
gle as broad as the Christian scholarship of the Gospel 
world, and as severe as the cultured conscience of 
the Christian age. Humanity, with all its hopes and 
fears, will rise to meet you at your coining. Liberty, 
with its blessings for generations yet unborn, will 
welcome you to the arena of moral victory. Religion 
will hail you as a champion-band in the new con- 
flict with the old errors of mankind, and the old 
corruptions of human nature. By embarking 
scholarship in the cause of manhood, you will secure 
it from the paralysis which fell on Greek and Roman 
scholarship and destroyed it. By bringing to the 
rescue of the Republic, and the duties of citizenship, 
the culture of the university, or the self culture of 
your own intellect, you will make Liberty a reality 
throughout the world. You will usher in the day 
when not a slave shall clank his chains, when not a 
tyrant's throne shall stand upon the bosom of the 
freeborn earth, when the power of caste shall be 
broken, when the persecutions of creed shall be all 
ended ! Your mission lies among the glories of a 
grander literature, a better civilization, and a purer 
Christianity. In the crises and convulsions of the 
present hour, the world shall break its chrysalis and 



54 young man's friend. 

ascend to a higher form of being. The baptism of 
blood is but the type of political regulation, the 
symbol of national emancipation. In the throes and 
agonies of this hour a new liberty is born, and a new 
civilization receives the seal of the Almighty. 

When Dr. Felton was inaugurated as president of 
Harvard College he said : « ' The all-important ques- 
tion is, Does the training of Harvard, rear up a race 
of men, — high-minded men? Public and private 
influence" he said, "has built and filled yonder 
library, and these learned halls* The same generous 
spirit has endowed these professorships. Have the ob- 
jects of all these costly sacrifices and noble endowments 
been attained ? Are all these diligent labors, these 
watchful cares, daily and nightly exercised by the 
academic body, rewarded by the bright accomplish- 
ments and honorable characters of the young men 
who annually go forth from these ancient halls into 
the busy world? If not, let these ancient halls 
crumble to the earth ; let yonder noble library be 
scattered or burned by invading barbarians; let 
yonder museum, which now contains in its ample 
spaces an organic world, be levelled, brick by brick, 
and the great naturalist, who has gathered its 
treasures from every quarter of the earth, return to 



THE IIOUPw AND THE MAN. 55 

the land, whose great loss we have thought our ex- 
ceeding gain, in his coming." 

So we say of every college and every pulpit, of 
every philosophy and every reformation, — if it does 
not assist in the formation of a race of "men, high- 
minded men," let it crumble and perish. A former 
governor of Massachusetts closed a speech at Har- 
vard College with the sentiment : ' ' Prosperity to 
this, and every institution on the face of the earth, 
which is engaged in the work of creating men" 
To that sentiment we utter our fervent response. 
Prosperity to everything that contributes to the 
creation of men ! 

Young men, the most magnificent hour of the 
world's history has been reached ; the grandest op- 
portunities of time are open before you ! Enter into 
the greatness of the hour, with all the strength of 
manhood. Bring to life's great contest muscle and 
brain, force and mettle, conscience and piety, — 
entire manhood. 

The Age is Truth's wide battle-field, 
The Day is struggling with the Xight, 

For Freedom hath again revealed 
A Marathon of holy right. 



LECTURE II. 

THE GAME OF LIFE. 

What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew ,x.vi. 26. 

/^^ HE form of this question implies that a man 
'/ | i may lose his soul and then wish to purchase 

^*r it again. The phraseology carries the idea of 
a business transaction, — - a barter of which the soul is 
the subject. There is nothing in the universe worth 
so much as an immortal spirit, except it be atoning 
blood. That blood is not in our hands to buy and 
sell. It is not an article of human brokerage ; it is 
not quoted in the stock exchange ; it has no place in 
the list of prices current. More precious than gold, 
more priceless than rubies, God holds it at his own 
sovereign disposal. But souls are exposed for sale at 
every corner and in every lane of life ; advertised in 
every market-place ; bought and sold in every public 
highway ; bartered away for nought by beardless boys 
and hoary men ; recklessly squandered, wantonly 
thrown away by those who could not redeem and 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 57 

purchase them back for all the worlds that shine and 
glisten in the regions of illimitable space. 

It is strange, but a man will often value his house, 
which the fire will burn or the winds blow down ; or 
his vessel, which a sunken rock may strand, or a night 
storm founder, more than he does his soul. Many a 
soul has been bartered off for an object far less val- 
uable than a house or a ship, deeded away without 
equivalent. 

I propose to speak now to young men upon 
" The Game of Life," and the pertinency of the re- 
marks I have just made will be seen as I proceed. 

Gambling is very common ; one of the most preva- 
lent of vices. It is practised not only in the gorgeous 
crime-palaces of Baden-Baden, and Weisbaden, by 
German princes and courtly ladies ; not only in 
the gilded saloons of Paris, and aristocratic club- 
houses of London ; not only in the time-corrupted 
capitals of Europe, but everywhere among us, — in 
the purlieus of New York and in Madison Square ; 
in Boston, the Athens of America ; in the marble 
tenements of Philadelphia, and in the seat of Gov- 
ernment at Washington ; in all our cities, towns, and 
villages throughout the land. 

Of all the vices, I suppose there is none that so 



58 young man's friend. 

effectually breaks down a man's character, hardens his 
heart, sears his conscience, debauches his intellect, 
and makes of him a devil incarnate, as does gambling. 
A few months ago a young man of respectable con- 
nections and honorable standing became addicted 
to gambling, and in one night lost thousands of dol- 
lars in a saloon on one of the most public streets, 
and beneath the shadow of heaven-pointing church- 
spires in the metropolis of New England. Appalled 
at his losses, he went to the store of a druggist and pro- 
cured a dose of poison which, in despair, he swallowed. 
Returning to his boon companions, he fell down and 
died in their midst. But there was no humanity 
in that place of abandonment. They dragged the 
gasping, quivering body to a corner of the room, and 
left it, while the game went on ! 

Henry Ward Beecher says, " The gambler takes 
the meanest way of doing the dirtiest deed. The 
victim's own partner is sucking his blood ; " and adds 
that " when playing becomes desperate gambling, the 
heart is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings 
have smouldered to ashes ; and a thorough-paced 
gamester could rattle dice in a charnel house, and 
wrangle for his stakes amid murder, and pocket gold 
dropping from the blood of his own kindred." Dr. 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 59 

Nott says, " The finished gambler has no heart; he 
would play at his brother's funeral, and gamble upon 
his mother's coffin." Dr. Thompson says, " As 
the gambler walks the streets, childhood should flee 
in terror at his approach ; uncontaminated youth 
should hide from the very sight of him ; the maiden, her 
brow blanched with fear or suffused with indignation, 
should spurn him from her path ; honest manhood 
should shrink from him as the basest of the species ; 
and old age, leaning on its staff, too feeble to turn 
aside for refuge, should lift its eyes to Heaven to be 
delivered from contamination more foul than the 
grave." 

A majority of the crimes of large cities, the brutal 
murders, the wholesale robberies, originate at the 
gaming-table, where passions are inflamed, lusts 
heated with strong drink, reason and conscience 
debauched by the excitements and associations of the 
hour. When a man becomes a professional gambler, 
there is but little hope left for him. What Horace 
Walpole says of gambling is true, — " It so effectu- 
ally silences the voice of conscience that a man can 
commit any crime and feel no remorse." 

But there are thousands who would shun the gam- 
bling table as a living curse ; who never lost a dollar 



60 young man's fkiend. 

by any game of chance ; who are strictly virtuous and 
upright ; on whose names not a blemish yet appears ; 
who, in the fearful game of life, are in danger of 
losing what is of more infinite value than the mines 
of Golconda, or the diamond beds of Peru. 

Some of you have probably seen the famous etch- 
ing of Eetzsch, entitled " The Game of Life." 
It should hang in the room of every young man ; it 
should adorn every counting-house and workshop ; it 
should be found in every place where young men 
congregate, — in armories, and news-rooms, and 
engine-houses ! The idea of the etching is this : A 
marble sarcophagus, covered with elaborate designs 
and exquisite carvings, is the chess-board. The fig- 
ures at the board, engaged in the game, are two, — 
Satan and the young man. The former has the lofty 
brow, the scornful look, the haughty air of the Father 
of lies. The latter is a fine-figured, well-developed 
youth, in whose look innocence and trusting faith are 
enthroned. Behind them is a winged angel, gazing 
upon the young man with a look of heavenly pity 
and commiseration. He is watching the progress of 
that game with untold interest. The figures with 
which Satan plays are ranged before him. His king 
is a representation of his own infernal self. His 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 61 

queen is Voluptuousness. His officers are Idleness, 
Anger, Falsehood, Covetousness, Pride, and Skepti- 
cism. His pawns are Doubts and Fears. 

The young man has his figures all arranged. The 
king represents his own immortal soul. His queen is 
the Religion of Christ. His officers are Truth, 
Innocence, Humility, Joy, Love, Hope. His pawns 
are Prayer and Faith. The play has been some time 
in progress, and the spectator can see at a glance 
that the young man is no match for his wily, deceit- 
ful, malignant antagonist. Some of his officers have 
already been captured. Innocence is gone ; Love has 
disappeared ; Joy has been taken, and the game has 
grown desperate. Truth is in the utmost danger ; 
Humility is sorely pressed. The king, his soul, is 
not yet lost, but that sorrowing angel's face betokens 
his fears that such an event may soon ensue. 

Catching an idea from this picture, which is true 
to life, and fearfully portrays the condition and 
danger of many young men, let me push the figure, 
and enter more fully into the details of the awful game 
of life which is being played. 

1. Notice the players in the game of life. — On one 
side is Satan, under all the various phases and shapes 



62 young man's fkiend. 

that he assumes. His business is to pursue the game 
with men. His object is to defeat the purpose of 
God in the creation of the human soul, destroy the 
hopes and happiness of mankind, and extinguish all 
the light which shines on the pathway of a lost, 
doomed world. He is skilled in his arts. He well 
knows how to use his figures. He understands all 
the intricacies of the game, all the windings of the 
human heart which he designs to destroy, and all the 
snares he must make to accomplish his direful end. 
The garments he puts on are numerous, and well 
befit all occasions. His smile is always bland, but 
beneath it an infernal leer. His hand is ever steady, 
and his heart ever cold and strong. His eye never 
wanders from one point, — the ruin of his victim. 
He plays anywhere, — -sometimes in the theatre, 
sometimes in the hall of festivity and dancing, some- 
times in the Exchange, sometimes in the house of 
God. 

On the other side is that young man now sitting 
there, the object of a father's solicitude and a moth- 
er's prayers. Look at him ! He is gifted with 
innocence, intellect, virtue, and wholesome religious 
convictions. He has a warm heart and a cultivated 
mind. He has faculties and powers which would fit 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 63 

him for extensive usefulness, and for the highest posi- 
tions of earthly honor and emolument. He has vast 
wealth of affections to be lavished on some object, 
worthy or unworthy, and a precious, immortal, never- 
dying soul to be saved or lost. 

This is the unequal game, and these the parties 
pitted against each other in the hazard-lot of human 
life. 

Satan played the game with our first parents, and 
Adam and Eve lost innocence and Paradise. He 
played with Cain, and took from him all he had of 
value and left him a fugitive and a vagabond. He 
played with Absalom, and that gifted young man lost 
a throne, and perished miserably. He played with 
Judas Iscariot, and drove him, as desperate gambling 
often drives, to madness and suicide. 

Why lies that young man to-night in a felon's cell, 
convicted of infamous crime ? He has been playing 
with Satan — and lost ! Why walks that youthful, 
once hopeful, promising child of pious parents, with 
downcast eyes and bowed head, with shame and guilt 
on every feature ? He has been playing with Satan — 
and lost. Satan is a shrewd, malignant foe ; he knows 
the weak points in a man's character ; he detects at a 
single glance his foibles and takes advantage of them. 



64 young man's friend. 

He sets his nets and traps for unwary feet, induces 
unsophisticated ones to try the game with him, and 
how often does he sweep the stakes away with his 
rude hand, leaving the poor trembling wretch in 
powerless despair ! 

" Come," he says to one young man, " here is the 
game of Forgery, — play it, and it will make you rich 
in a single day. Come," he says to another, " play 
the game of Fraud; it is an easy game, and will leave 
thousands in your treasury. Come, " he says to a 
third, "play the game of Pleasures; it is sweet; it 
echoes with music ; it thrills with delight ; it opens 
flowery paths for your feet, and tranquil bowers in 
which you may repose. Come," he says to the next, 
t i play the game of Indulgence ; ' tis only a glass of 
wine, ruby red and sparkling, and will yield a lasting 
pleasure." 

He is playing the desperate game with some of 
the young men here to-night, — with every one who 
has strayed a single inch out of the path of rectitude. 
How he presses upon you with the various tempta- 
tions of the world ! How he goes round the weak 
places in your characters until he at length finds an 
avenue into your heart ! How he suits himself to your 
inclinations and fancies ; adapts his movements to your 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 65 

peculiarities of mind, and presses with Satanic power 
upon that point where you are least defended ! How 
he tries to induce you to suspect your best friends, and 
put your confidence in your worst enemies ! How 
he tries to lead you to read that which is vitiating 
and corrupting, — yellow-covered novels, and infidel 
publications ! How he endeavors to secure your 
presence at midnight revels, and leads you step by 
step to your eternal loss ! See him strewing the way 
to death with flowers ! See him, covering over with 
garlands and graces, the pit into which so many fall, 
and into which you will plunge if you follow on ! 
See him, as he hides the mouth of the tomb, so that 
his victims may take no alarm ! See him as he sets 
the door with gems and diamonds, with pearls and 
jewels, while behind all is corruption ! See him 
frescoing the front of hell with designs stolen from 
Paradise ! 

II. Notice now what the parties in the game of 
life are playing with ; w T hat figures they use. — Satan 
plays with Pride, Unbelief, Falsehood, Anger, and 
every base and wicked thing ! What does the young 
man play with ? What are you risking against the 
adversary of your soul ? A mother's love ! Rev- 



66 YOUNG man's friend. 

erence for religion ! Eespect for the Bible ! Venera- 
tion for the Sabbath day ! The respect of community ! 
A good name and reputation ! A clean heart ! 
Happiness in time and eternity ! Heaven and the 
salvation of the soul ! The game is a long one ; 
death alone finishes it. But look and see how it 
progresses, mark the chances, and calculate the 
results. 

There is a young man who once loved his parents, 
and honored them ; that mother of his was prized, 
her prayers and tears loved, and her counsels always 
•4^ heeded. But in the game of life, he has lost it all. 
It has all been swept away. He can now ridicule 
her piety, jeer about her precious Saviour, and turn 
with contempt from her pious example and instruc- 
tions. What a loss he has sustained ! 

Once he reverenced the Sabbath. When the hal- 
lowed day came, he laid aside secular avocations and 
pleasures, and went to the house of God. But now 
he can do anything on Sunday, — ride, work, play, 
sport, or anything else that he wants to. The idea 
of going to Sunday School to study the Bible, he does 
not even entertain ; the sanctuary is visited only now 
and then. He cares no more for the Sabbath than 
he does for Christmas, and all his respect for the 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 67 

fourth commandment is broken up ! What a loss he 
has sustained ! 

Once he loved the Bible and believed it. There 
was a beautiful little copy lying on the table in his 
room, — his mother's gift, or a present from his 
Sabbath School teacher. He loved to read it. The 
Psalms he committed to memory. The sweet nar- 
ratives of Christ he could recite accurately. But 
now, if he ever looks into it, it is to find one pas- 
sage to contradict another. The Bible is no more to 
him than the " Book of Mormon," or the Koran of 
Mahomet. He has no love for its hallowed truth, 
no veneration for God, its author, or Christ its 
subject. All that Satan has robbed him of. What 
a loss he has sustained ! 

Once he had the prospect of usefulness ; he was 
happy in the idea that he was growing up, making 
this dark, lost world a better world. He has no 
such hope now. His irreligious life, his carelessness 
about the welfare of others, the cravings of his lusts, 
his inordinate desires for present gratification prevent 
all such ideas. Oh, it is a glorious thing to be useful, 
to make the city of your abode a better city ; the 
world in which you live a better world. This hope 
he had, but it is lost in the game. Oh, what a loss he 
has sustained ! 



68 young man's fkiend. 

/ 

And what gives Satan for these ? What men does 
he allow the young to take on his chess-board ? He 
gives Atheism instead of reverence toward God ; Dis- 
obedience instead of love toward parents ; Profanity 
instead of Sabbath veneration ; Worldliness for relig- 
ion ; Pride for humanity. Satan never takes without 
bestowing something. His maxim is, " exchange is 
no robbery." But he takes the best, the noblest of 
Heaven's gifts, and leaves the lowest and meanest of 
his own traits. He takes innocence and leaves 
crime ; he takes virtue and leaves vice ; he takes 
peace and leaves contention ; he takes hope and 
leaves despair ; he takes faith and leaves skepticism. 
He does not do this all at once. No young man is 
ruined in a day. Step by step ; inch by inch ; 
minute by minute, the work is done. A man will 
do to-day, without compunction of conscience, deeds 
from which he would have shrunk yesterday. To- 
morrow he will do things from which he recoils 
to-day. No man can stand upon an inclined plane, 
and vice is down hill ; and the nearer one comes to 
the bottom the lower and faster he sinks. 

But I have not finished the figures for which Satan 
is playing. There is another. It is your being, — 
the immortal soul. The desperate snares of the 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 69 

monster are for that. Perhaps he has got your inno- 
cence, your light-heart edness, your faith, and your 
religion ; but he is not satisfied, and wants something 
else. Now see what moves he makes ! how desperate 
he has grown ! how savage the temptations he pre- 
sents ! how adroit the charges which he carries ; and 
your poor soul is all surrounded by his devices, all 
beleaguered by his Satanic influences, — almost lost. 
Why, some of you may have gone so far that, unless 
you appeal to more than Satanic, a Godlike power 
to break up the game, and give you back your lost 
innocence, your joyful, happy heart, all will soon be 
decided. The last game in any play is almost always 
the most desperate ; the^strokes the heaviest, the play- 
ing the most reckless. And when a man is stripped 
of all but his soul, he becomes worthless. He lays 
that down, also ! Some who read this page have 
staked their souls. The enemy is pressing them, 
and soon all may be decided. 

And what will be the consequences if the soul is 
lost? A man may lose his innocence and virtue, and 
by abounding grace have his sins all washed away in 
atoning blood, and he be put in a better position 
before God than if he had never sinned at all ! He 
may lose his faith, and be like a soulless, rudderless 



70 young man's friend. 

ship, drifting on the shoreless, inky sea of unbelief, 
and yet may be brought back to cast anchor in the 
clear waters of life, fast by the mount of God. He 
may lose property, reputation, everything ; but if the 
soul is lost, that is a greater loss than all the rest. 
A lost soul ! O, who knows anything about that? 
Who can tell its fearful indissoluble destiny ? 

In the picture to which I have alluded, an angel is 
seen, with meek countenance, folded hands, and 
averted face, in sorrow over the result of that life- 
game. Ah, is it not something more than a pretty 
fancy, that some sweet, pure spirit, some shining 
angel, watches over the tempted one, and whispers in 
his ear, and shows him how to foil the deceiver? If 
our departed friends are made ministering spirits, 
what holy guardians, what tender watchers, the young 
have. By one, stands a mother, who died in hope 
and went up to glory ; over another, hovers a sister's 
spirit ; over another, a wife throws her angel wings. 
What made that young man brace himself against 
temptation yesterday in the store ? The angel behind 
him ! What caused that cup of inebriation to be 
dashed so quickly to the earth ? The angel behind him ! 
What made that thoughtless person refuse to go out 
riding into the country on the holy day ? The angel 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 71 

behind him ! What stopped the oath that was leap- 
ing to those lips yonder ? What induced that young 
man to come here to-night ? Who is saying to him 
now, i ' Take care of your soul ? " The angel behind 
him! Perhaps to-night, hovering over us, are the 
viewless forms of brothers and fathers, wives and 
sisters, and mothers, who have died and gone to 
heaven, and who in their exaltation cannot forget the 
friends they left on earth. If so, what sadness comes 
on their spirit-faces, as that young man there says, 
"I don't want to be a Christian ;" and that one says, 
" 1 had rather read a novel than the Bible ;" and that 
one says, " I would rather dance than go to church ;" 
and that one says, "I don't believe in any God;" 
and that one says, ■" I '11 make money, honestly if I 
can, but I'll make money;" and that one says, 
" Away with your religion, I don't want any of it." 
O, if sadness is known among redeemed spirits, 
how sad they will be as they fly to the courts of 
bliss to-night, if all these young men continue as 
they are, — still playing the losing game. And 
one among them more sad than all the rest, sadder 
than the mother who bore thee, or the wdfe that loved 
thee, or the sister that prided in thee, — O, how 
sad He will be if you believe not ! O, could you 



72 YOUNG man's friend. 

see him, his head all crowned with thorns, his 
hands bearing the holes of the spikes, his form all 
covered with atoning blood, — how sad he would be ! 

And still the game of life goes on. What if the 
soul be lost ? Answer the question of the text, — 
" What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" 
Suppose he has a crown like that which adorns Vic- 
toria's head, or rests on Napoleon's brow ! Will that 
purchase it? O, no. Suppose he has all the wealth 
of Astor and Girard, Peabody and Rothschild ! 
Will that buy it? O, no. Suppose he has all the 
honors of Charlemagne and Alexander, Nelson 
and Wellington! Will that pay for it? O, no. 
Suppose he has all the wisdom of Herschel and 
Bacon, Locke and Newton ! Will that get it 
back? O, no. Suppose he has the eloquence of 
Demosthenes and Cicero, Burke and Pitt, Webster 
and Clay! Will that buy it back again? O, no. 
Suppose he has all this, — wealth, honor, crowns, 
eloquence, wisdom, all combined, will that repurchase 
it? O, no. O, no. 

No, nothing can redeem it, — it is lost, and who 
can tell anything about a lost soul hurrying on to 
meet the unfolding future? Young men, you stand 
face to face with God and Eternity, and Religion ; 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 73 

the life of the soul, presents her great, solemn 
claim. Will you have Christ for your friend? He 
alone can defeat the machinations of Satan, and make 
you winner in the game of life. 

On one occasion, a colporteur was distributing 
tracts on board a steamboat. A man, looking like a 
gentleman, took one and cut it into small pieces with 
his penknife ; one little piece fell upon his coat. He 
took it up and looked at it ; on one side was the word, 
God ; on the other side, as he turned it over, 
he read, Eternity. Contrition seized his guilty 
soul, and he was soon crying for mercy. 

Friend, you are in a solemn place. Behind you is 
God ; before you Eternity. Between God and Eter- 
nity you are playing the game of life, which perhaps 
will be decided ere the week through which you are 
passing shall close. 
7 



LECTURE III 

ON THE DANGERS OP CITY LIFE. 
Is the tyoung man Absalom safe. 2 Samuel, xviii. Z2. 

y^j&^HERE is danger everywhere in this life. A 
I J / train of cars goes rushing along the iron track. 
^Ls On board are fathers hastening home to greet, 
after a long exile, their dear children ; husbands re- 
turning to their love-lighted dwellings ; children 
eager to cast themselves into the arms of parental 
fondness ; men of business, entirely absorbed in the 
bargainings and traffickings of life ; men of letters, 
dazzled with the prospect of literary fame, and 
politicians bound on some shrewd errand of party 
aggrandizement. Hope ripens, as in the distance 
the watch lamps of the city are discerned, seeming to 
hang, like stars in a globe of darkness. But all at 
once a crash comes. The fiery horse leaps like a mad 
demon, up the inclined plane of an open drawbridge, 
and dashes with its life-freighted cars over into the 
dark, howling abyss below. The tidings are borne 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 75 

on the lightning wires to all parts of the land, and 
there is mourning and grief in the homes that waited 
that night for the wanderer's return. 

A few persons attempt to navigate in a little boat 
a beautiful sheet of water, that lies between two 
commercial cities. All night long huge steamers are 
coming up and down that Sound. The little craft, on 
board which are fathers, wives, children, crosses the 
track of one of these steamers again and again, as if 
toying with fate. At length a collision takes place, 
and a howl of agony comes from the doomed boat, 
and woe and sorrow go surging back to the shore 
to settle down in the hearts of bereaved ones. 

A mammoth ship leaves the Pacific coast for an 
eastern city; she sweeps on with her cargo of 
human beings and her ballast of gold toward her 
destination. Imagination paints the spires of the dis- 
tant city on the evening sky, and fancy hears on the 
crested waves the sweet anthems of home. But a 
storm arises. The billows are crested with foam, 
and the ship plunges toward destruction. The 
engine fires go out ; the huge machine ceases to 
work ; the ship heaves at the mercy of the storm, and 
with a mad bound goes down at length, with all her 
passengers. 



76 YOUNG man's friend. 

These are but pictures of life. They startle us 
when first presented, but we soon forget them. The 
railroad tragedy soon fades from the memory ; the 
warning is soon forgotten. The fearful calamity of 
to-day is obliterated from our thoughts to-morrow. 
As one public warning follows another, we forget 
them. As one wave of ocean obliterates another, so 
one wave of sorrow overs weeps the rest, and rolls 
itself up upon the shores of life and breaks in blood 
and tears over the homes of the people. 

But there is no shipwreck, no ocean conflagration, 
no railroad tragedy, no public catastrophe, that com- 
pares with the moral wreck of a human being. We 
have seen the frightful collision on the track, cars 
dashed to pieces, the wounded writhing, dead bodies 
laid upon the greensward, weeping wives and hus- 
bands all around. 

We have seen a vessel dashed \ipon the rocky 
coast, beaten to pieces, her crew swept off one by 
one, the waves washing over the deck, the shrieks of 
the mariners sounding along the shore, and the hopes 
of these brave men swallowed up in the breakers. 

But there is no spectacle this side of Eternity so 
awful, as a young man, destroyed by vice, and cast 
up a wreck upon the shores of Time. I have wan- 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 77 

dered beneath the broken arches of Melrose, I have 
looked up through the roofless temples of fallen Rome, 
I have trodden the pavements of the temple of Olym- 
pus, and the floor of the Parthenon in Athens, but 
never have I seen a ruin so sadly grand, so awfully 
disastrous, as the ruined temple of a human soul. 

You have not far to go to find such ruins. A 
man wrecked ! His eyes red and fiery ; his God- 
given intellect shattered and gone ; his cheeks bloated ; 
his lips sensual ; his affections imbruted ; his soul, 
instead of being a temple, where are hung the por- 
traits of the good, the beautiful, and the true, adorned 
with statues of noble generous deeds, is a cavern 
where crimes are concealed, and robber passions lurk, 
and from which every holy, generous impulse dis- 
appears. I have seen such a man, such a ruin; 
and so have you ! He stands before God a blasted 
thing ; useless to himself, and a disgrace to all who 
claim him as their own. Is a stranded ship so awful 
a spectacle as a shipwrecked man ? Is a ruined 
temple so awful as a ruined man ? Oh, no ! Nothing 
out of hell is so heart-rending, so unutterably fearful, 
as the ruin of a man. 

A great city may well be compared to an ocean on 
which men are wrecked. The coral caves below the 



78 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND, 

brine, have not so many whitening bones, and the 
maelstrom and the vortex have not drowned so many 
victims, as have the dens of vice which abound in 
large cities. A young man venturing into the city 
to live, is like a man venturing out to sea. Before 
him are storms and tempests, midnight and the 
waves ; before the other are blasts of temptation, 
deceptive maelstroms of vice, and invisible foes. 

Hence, we find an appropriateness in the language 
of the text, — "Is the voun^ man Absalom safe?" 
It is wise and proper to urge this question in 
relation to the thousands of young men who resort 
to this city to gain a livelihood ; who come from the 
east and the west, the north and the south, and find 
homes or sepulchres. There are dangers threatening 
every one of them ; there are safeguards against 
those dangers, and the pulpit and the press, those 
great beacon-lights of public safety, are false guides 
and extinguished lights, if they do not show the 
danger, and point to the sources of safety. 

We need look at the city but a single moment to 
discern the perils to which young men are exposed. 
A man may go from his counting-house to his dwell- 
ing, and believe the city — I speak not particularly of 
one but of all cities — a paradise of goodness. He 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 79 

may measure its property by the length, depth, and 
height of its warehouses, its piety and virtue by the 
number and elegance of its steeples, its domestic 
bliss by the brown stone and the marble that is 
worked into its princely residences, and forget that 
there is an outside and an under side of this life. 
But if he reads the journals of the day with the heart 
of a Christian, if he follows with the eye of a good 
Samaritan the records of sad events, if he walks 
abroad at night with the purpose of a philanthropist, 
if he converses with young men, if he makes himself 
familiar with life as it is, he will shudder at the view 
presented. Philadelphia is doubtless one of the most 
moral cities on this continent. Ten thousand influences 
for good are at work, and young men are saved from 
some sources of public debauchery which prevail in 
New York, and even in puritan Boston. But a 
man's whole Christian nature will be shocked when he 
looks at the crimes which abound, and the temptations 
which are opened in any large city. 

Conspicuous on the most public streets, seeking 
the utmost notoriety, are the playhouses, the dram- 
shops, the gambling resorts, while spreading out in 
all directions are irresistible forms of evil to lure and 
destroy. 



80 



I have time to specify only a few general forms of 
danger which visit young men in the city. I men- 
tion — 

1. The danger of an artificial, unnatural life. City 
life is necessarily artificial, conventional, to some 
extent. But no one can fail to see that the tendency 
of things is to a most unnatural existence. We 
speak of a young stranger just arrived from the 
country, as green, unsophisticated, verdant. What 
do you mean by that? That he is ignorant and 
unlearned ? Certainly not ; but simply that he has 
not learned city ways and habits, that he has not 
fallen into the forms of city life. He talks naturally, 
right from his heart ; he has none of the habits of 
fashionable people. He is blunt, expressing his opin- 
ion freely in relation to duty. He knows little about 
etiquette, — he never heard of Chesterfield. There is 
an honesty about him that is commendable, a sim- 
plicity that is charming. Nobody finds him ignorant 
or uninteresting, — but unsophisticated. He is a 
natural man ; his ideas are in a natural state. Now 
all the polish you can give him will be a benefit ; but 
the danger is that while you polish, you will destroy 
nature, and make the man artificial. Why, how 
much of human life in the city is artificial ! How 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 81 

much is hollow, corrupting, untruthful ! There is 
something in city life which destroys the charm of 
simplicity, and makes us hypocrites. Go into a 
social gathering, a fashionable party, and there are 
people thrown together, congratulating each other, 
when envy and hatred are in the heart, and bitterness 
and woe are in the soul. Every young man who 
enters the city is in danger of having the genuine 
truthfulness of his heart worn off, and a false shell 
put on. City life is a rubbing process, polishing it 
may be and should be, but making the subject of it 
untruthful and hollow-hearted. Nothing is more 
unwelcome than truth. A lady asks you if her babe 
is not beautiful ; tell her the truth, and you break 
friendship with her. A side remark solicits a com- 
pliment ; give an honest reply, and you offend. Now 
in the midst of all the artificial forms of society, 
and all the hollow, hypocritical cant of modern life, 
the young man is liable to become false, vain, and 
unnatural. He loses the stamp of conscientious 
integrity placed upon him by his parents and his God, 
and receives instead the gloss of the dancing-master. 
He becomes a hypocrite, like the rest of the world, 
uttering unmeaning compliments, and wearing un- 
meaning smiles. 



82 YOUNG man's feiend. 

2. The danger of imbibing false notions of life, and 
false views of honesty. When a young man comes 
into the city everything is changed with him. The 
day of his arrival is the turn of life with him. He 
steps out into the great world ; leaves the cradle, the 
schoolhouse, the playground, and the old home- 
stead behind him. A new existence opens to him ; 
on the day he arrives here he is born again. Unless 
his views are fixed, and his opinions all formed, and 
his heart all guarded, he is in danger of having per- 
verted notions of life. Instead of feeling that he is a 
man and an immortal, bound to live for the good of 
mankind, to make the world better, he will come to 
the idea that everything must work to his own per- 
sonal aggrandizement. If he is a merchant, money- 
making will be the object of his life ; if he is a lawyer, 
legal fame will be his object ; if he is a politician, 
office will be his aim. He will live with the idea that 
he must live for himself, look out for " number one," 
make all his associations and connections subservient 
to his own selfish ends. He will present us the mel- 
ancholy spectacle of a man living for himself alone ; 
centring in his own person all his schemes of good, 
and all his desires for prosperity. Such a man is a 
loathsome spectacle, revealing all the hideous deform- 
ity of selfishness. 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 83 

To this will soon be added an unscrupulousness as 
to the means of attaining his ends. The man who 
lives for himself will feel little concern as to the 
means he uses to secure his own gratification. A 
great city is a general " take-care-of-yourself " place, 
and the young man very soon begins to feel that 
his neighbors must look out for themselves, and, if 
they are cheated, they only are to blame. A great 
city is a sad place to test a man's honesty, to warp 
his ideas of life, to make his heart small and selfish, 
and narrow him down to his own low standard of 
taste and feeling, while, if his aim is right, the city will 
develop him ; if his heart is true, the city will furnish 
him a fine field of usefulness. Unless he is careful, 
the customs of the city will corrupt and poison him. 
City life generally is the making or the ruin of a 
man. A careful man, sailing down a river full of 
rocks and dangers, will be doubly careful, but a care- 
less man will strike and founder. So in a great com- 
munity, a man with high aims and lofty integrity will 
be doubly guarded, while he whose purposes are not 
fixed will be likely to rush into speculation, deal on 
principles of questionable honesty, and cumber his 
conscience with irrevocable misdeeds. 

3. The danger of indulgence. There is always 



84 YOUNG man's fkiend. 

more animal life in the city than in the country. In 
a quiet country community the habits of the people 
are generally simple, frugal, industrious. When a 
man leaves his home and settles in the city, unless he 
has a large share of common sense, he loses the 
simplicity of early life, and goes into fashionable 
follies and dissipations. The occupation of many 
men, the vocation which they pursue, without regard 
to trouble or expense is simply to pamper the brutish 
part of their natures. If you should look at men, 
you would imagine they had no conception beyond 
feeding and clothing their bodies. The intellectual 
and moral natures are wholly neglected, while the 
appetite is indulged, the senses feasted, and all that 
can minister to physical comfort patronized. It is a 
hard saying, and may seem uncharitable, but it is 
true, that many men in these troublous times seem 
to care more for a good dinner than for the safety of 
their country, and the salvation of their souls ; they 
seem to care more for the indulgence of some appetite 
than for the highest interests of man and the highest 
good of society. Self-indulgence is the only law by 
which many lives are regulated, and not a few have 
no thought of life beyond pampering themselves. 
Now in a great city the means of self-indulgence, 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 85 

and the temptations to it, are so numerous, that the 
young man is liable to be swept into the current and 
borne on with it to a most brutish and shameful life. 
Night is turned into day, fashion and frivolity become 
imperious tyrants, and the grander, nobler aspects of 
existence are lost in the low and debasing pursuits of 
physical enjoyment. The more a man gives himself 
up to carnal indulgence, the farther he gets from the 
divine and godlike in man, the less he is like the 
angels of heaven, who wear pure robes, and who have 
clean hearts. 

The pains and penalties of self-indulgence are 
marked on every side. There walks a young man 
who has steeped himself in drink ! Once he had a 
brilliant imagination, a fertile fancy, a clear brain, 
and a vigorous intellect. Now his brain is clouded, 
his intellect is paralyzed, and he is a saddened, mis- 
anthropic victim to his lusts. His fine mind is 
destroyed by his vices, and his lofty genius darkened 
by his habits. Edgar Allen Poe, one of the most 
gifted of our authors, is an illustration of what I 
mean. Some of you may remember that sad, pale, 
intellectual face, as it used to appear in your streets, 
while he was connected with Graham's Magazine. 
But self-indulgence ruined him, and he who might 



86 YOUNG man's friend. 

have lived a life of honor and usefulness, spent his 
last night in a debauch, and died in delirium tremens 
in a Baltimore hospital. 

In other cases, where indulgence takes some other 
form, the health is ruined, and the man, before he 
is half through life, has a body racked with pain, a 
heart full of darting pangs, and lives on in wretched- 
ness and sorrow. The victims are all around us, — 
victims of gluttony, victims of strong drink, victims 
of night dissipations, victims of the various forms of 
self-abuse. They burn and consume behind the 
marble walls of aristocratic dwellings ; they groan 
and sigh in the lazar houses of charity. City life is 
a hotbed, where unnatural things ripen fast, and come 
to sad maturity early, and youth should ever walk 
with slow and cautious tread, lest hidden snares and 
concealed pitfalls be in the way. Life everywhere 
has dangers, but in cities they congregate, and breed, 
and multiply, — little dangers like little vipers, great 
dangers like the thousand-footed scorpion, and the 
huge boa constrictor. 

4. The danger from religious error. I suppose 
no place is free from religious error. There is no 
town so small, no village so obscure, as to be without 
its heresies. Even Eden was not free from it, for 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 87 

Satan then whispered falsehood in the ear of our first 
mother, and Eve became the first apostate. But in 
large cities errors become bold and unblushing, and 
secure power and influence. The advocate of error 
always seeks the city, where he can have a wider 
field to work in, and more minds to poison. 

The young man leaves home and comes here, with 
the idea that now he will test everything, and see 
whether the religion of his father and mother is true 
or false. He soon falls into the hands of those who 
have lies to sell. He is met by one who tries to 
shake his faith in the existence of God ; by another 
who strives to weaken his confidence in this pure, 
blessed Bible ; by another who tells him that the idea 
of hell is a fiction, and the judgment a fable ; by 
another who ridicules the divinity of Christ, and 
tears the laurels from the Redeemer's brow ; by 
another who scouts at the atonement as an inhuman 
device. Every doctrine of this word is denied, every 
grand fundamental fact is scorned and derided, and 
he is asked to sail out on the fathomless ocean of 
unbelief without chart, pilot, or rudder to his ship ; 
and often the young man, bewildered, casts off all 
religion, saying, — "In the midst of all these con- 
flicting creeds, I can believe nothing." And from 



88 



that hour he begins to drift, and he continues to drift 
until he loses sight of shores, and beacon-lights, and 
headlands, and is crushed to pieces at last among 
the icebergs of Atheism and Unbelief. This has 
been the fate of thousands of young men who are 
skeptics as to all that is beautiful and true in the 
Bible. They have been cut loose from the Bible, and 
are drifting. Ah ! whither are they drifting ? Nearer 
to death, nearer to judgment, nearer to eternity ! 

5. The danger of fashionable amusements, of 
which the theatre stands as the centre. There are 
forms of fashionable pleasures, that, though not posi- 
tively criminal, are demoralizing and destructive, es- 
pecially to all religious connections. These forms of 
temptation are found mainly in the city, and consists 
of those exhibitions which make life unreal, and the 
mind discontented and unhappy. I would not say 
that fashionable amusements are all vicious ; I would 
not say that there can not be a theatre, even, 
where moral plays are acted, but it is a well-known 
fact that theatres from the beginning have been nur- 
series of crime, and many of the public amusements 
have been sources of ruin. There is no theatre in 
America which can sustain itself on what is called the 
legitimate drama. Every theatre in New York, 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 89 

Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston, would die out 
in a single year if the plays of Shakspeare were 
alone acted. There must be crime, loathsome in- 
trigue, and ghastly criminality insinuated in the play, 
and the ballet must be lewd and low. A young man 
entering a city, thinks he must go to the playhouse. 
He meets there bad company, he becomes fascinated 
with the scenes, he is tempted to be dishonest to 
secure means to indulge what soon becomes a passion, 
and goes downward from that hour. I think a mer- 
chant, who goes to the theatre himself, would not 
want to select his clerks from those who go there. 
He would rather have in his employ those who never 
enter the doors of the pit. Good men have always 
condemned the theatre. In every age stage plays 
have been found debasing and corrupting. That 
community in which such an agent of demoralization 
has been started, has been found to have had a vicious 
element in it. It stands in any city as the central 
object in the vast round of vitiating influences. 

"But what harm does the theatre do ?" asks the 
young man. " Why can I not go and see the play 
and be uninjured?" " What harm will it do?" is 
the question the young ask about every vice. What 
harm will the wine-cup do ? What harm will gam- 



90 young man's fkiend. 

bling do, now and then? This question always 
comes up. We have an answer to it. The tendency 
of the theatre is to public corruption. It is calcu- 
lated to make the young visionary, fond of the 
unreal and the unsubstantial, and unfits them to deal 
with the realities of life. It sinks the morals to a low 
standard, and preys upon the heart until it is cankered 
and rusted, or burned up with strange, unhallowed 
fire. It perverts the conscience, and puts a false 
estimate on virtue and vice. It makes men frivolous 
and vain, women worldly and foolish, and takes away 
true nobility of soul, the grandeur of human nature. 
The plays are generally without instruction or 
improvement, mere pandering to the coarsest and 
lowest instincts of our nature, calculated neither to 
mend the morals nor improve the heart. If there is 
dancing, the more corrupt and vicious it is, the better 
it is relished ; the atmosphere of the whole place 
looks like the gilded entrance to the pit. Its morals 
are not the morals of the Bible, and " it is generally 
the object of the poet (dramatist) ," as Hannah More 
says, " to erect a standard of honor in direct opposi- 
tion to the standard of Christianity." 

The more you extend theatrical amusements the more 
you vitiate national character. The ancient Greeks 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 91 

became insanely fond of the play, and it debased 
them. The present race of Frenchmen are theatre- 
goers, they live in the drama, and the result you 
have in their national characteristics. It is not 
enough to say that you can go to the theatre now and 
then and not be injured. The institution is a public 
calamity, and a curse to any city, and a Christian 
man should keep away from it whether he is injured 
or not. The testimony of the great and good of all 
time is against stage plays. Plato said, " Plays 
rouse the passions, and pervert the use of them ; and 
of course are dangerous to morality/ 9 Aristotle lays 
it down as a rule, " that the seeing of comedies ought 
to be forbidden to young people. " Ovid advised 
Augustus to suppress theatres as ' c a grand source 
of corruption/' If it be argued that the theatre 
in the days of Plato, Aristotle, and Ovid was a dif- 
ferent thing from what it is in modern times, then we 
quote the opinions of modern writers. The theatre 
Archbishop Tillotson pronounces, " the devil's chap- 
el," " a nursery of licentiousness and vice." Bishop 
Collier declared that " nothing had done more to de- 
bauch the age in which he lived, than stage poets and 
the playhouse." When it was proposed to establish 
a theatre in Geneva, the skeptic Rousseau declared it 



92 YOUNG man's friend. 



"a school of vice." John Wesley described it as 
" the sink of all profaneness and debauchery." John 
Newton said, " Theatres are fountains and means of 
vice." 

And if these witnesses be too far back in time we 
can quote those who have seen the theatre in the 
height of the nineteenth century. The eloquent 
Macaulay styles it, " a seminary of vice," and the 
gifted Alison, while apologizing for its corruption, 
said, " This corruption of it may be considered inevi- 
table." Fanny Kemble exclaims, " O, how I loathe 
my impotent craft." And when the pure-minded 
Macready left the stage, it is said that he sought a 
home far away from London, that his son might not 
see the inside of a theatre in his youth. 

I am speaking at length of the theatre, though 
that is only one form of fashionable, sinful amuse- 
ment. I give it this prominence because its position 
is a central one in the circle of temptations. It flaunts 
its obscene handbills on the corners of the streets ; it 
parades its hideous placards on every wall and unoc- 
cupied building ; it drives its carriage, on the panels 
of which is painted vice, by the doors of our churches. 
It is only one of the devices of Satan to crush the 
souls of young men, blast the hopes of young Chris- 






DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 93 

tians, and debauch society. Club houses, that are be- 
coming so numerous ; gambling saloons, which are 
found every where ; free concerts, where the heart's 
hopes are to be bartered away as the price of the low 
song ; midnight balls, where corruption is enticed, 
and heart-aches begin, where the cheek loses the 
roseate hue of health, and the heart its white garb 
of purity ! — all these are found in every great city. 
Ah, Satan has put these temptations everywhere; 
dressed them in such gaudy robes that your sons 
and daughters think they are heavenly institutions ; 
made them so attractive that they have stolen the 
hearts and blasted the hopes of many of our most 
promising church members, and entailed on the world 
a perfect curse. 

And I might lead your minds down to grosser 
temptations, and to more fearful sins, but I need not 
do that. There are in every city haunts where man 
stands as the demon of crime, and woman presides 
as the priestess of ruin ; where the foot cannot tread 
without being ensnared, and where the eyes cannot 
gaze without being defiled. 

No, the young man is not safe ! Ring out the 
sound, and let it reach the old homestead, that those 
parents may doubly guard their children before they 



94 young man's friend. 

send them into the perils that will environ them in 
the city. Ring it out, that every young man or 
woman that tries city life may know the evil and walk 
carefully, and live correctly. 

But some of you say, our children are safe, — we 
have homes here, — we know where our children 
are. No, you don't know where they are; nor 
can you be assured of their safety one hour in the 
future. They walk among dangers. You might as 
well think your son, who is on the field of battle, is 
safe among the whistling bullets of the foe, as he 
who walks among the temptations of city life. 

Unless he is armed with a coat of mail, and guarded 
by an invincible purpose, he is not safe. Your home 
may be a pleasant one, but that won't save your son ; 
he must have a home in the sheltering love of Christ. 
Your arm is strong and would hold him up on many 
occasions, but he wants the arm of God to hold him 
up amid the temptations of life. Don't trust your 
son to anything earthly — not even to the church, 
but to the arm of Omnipotence. 

The other evening, in passing along the streets, I 
overheard some lads shouting, " Ladies, look out for 
the rubber men," alluding to a very silly fright 
that prevailed some time since in one of our cities. 






DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 95 

There should be men and women to go up and 
down every lane and avenue of life, shouting, "Look 
out for Satan and his devices. " 

The conclusion to which I bring you is, that life is 
full of dangers and perils, and that against them some 
protection is needed. And where can such protection 
be found ? Not in books of health or morals ! Not 
in the writings of Plato and Aristotle ! It cannot be 
found in the market-place or the store. The pro- 
tection which our young men need is found alone in 
the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ. They need 
something that will control their passions, check their 
.ambition, regulate their pleasures, their revelry, their 
ideas of time and eternity. They need something 
stronger than moral character, and good education ; 
something beyond self-respect and good intentions ; 
something that will act as a safeguard gate when the 
streams of life are swollen, and the freshets pour 
themselves down from the mountains. The religion 
of Christ alone will do that. There are times when 
everything will be swept away if a man has not the 
pure blessed religion of the Son of God. He wants 
an inner life, that will lead him to revere the Bible 
and the writings of good men instead of the foolish 



96 young man's friend, 

blasphemy of Paine and his fallen compeers, and the 
absurd, debasing trash of Eugene Sue and George 
Sand ; something that will turn him from the play- 
house to the Sabbath school and the sanctuary ; some- 
thing that will give his impulses a right direction, 
and lead him up to God, his Father, and Christ, his 
best friend. 

O, it is the Cross that our young men need, — 
a cross to carry and a cross to lean upon; a cross 
to bear our sorrows, and take away our sins. 
Safety for young men is found only in the religion of 
blood, the religion of atonement, the religion of 
mercy. No powers of evil, no assaults of temptation 
can overcome you if you stand near the Cross, and 
have your hand in that of Jesus. The religion of 
Calvary, — the protection of the Cross, is needed. 

" Here hangs all human hope ; this nail 

Supports the falling universe : this gone, we drop, 
Horror unnerves us, and the dismal wish 
Creation had been smothered in her birth, 
That eternal darkness had been its shroud, 
And chaos its burial undisturbed ; chaos 
Less dark, less disordered, and less confused 
In her primeval state, than earth disrobed 
Of Calvary's light." 



DANGERS OF CITY LIFE. 97 

In whatever men do in this life, they should remem- 
ber the end of life. They should think of death, 
of judgment, and of eternity. A lady was 
speaking to an eminent English minister, of the 
pleasure she found in the fashionable amusements of 
life. After she had enumerated this and that, the 
minister gravely said : " There is one pleasure which 
you have not mentioned ! " " Ah ! what is that ? " she 
asked. " It is, madam " he replied, " the pleasure of 
thinking of these things when on the bed of death !" 
That was something she had never thought of, never 
dreamed of, how she would look at these things 
upon the bed of death. The young men whom I 
address find pleasure in the sinful ventures of this 
world ! How will they look at them on the bed of 
death? Will it give any pleasure to you then to 
think how many nights you squandered in the play- 
house ? How many you lingered in the brilliant hall 
of merriment, where wine and women made the 
morning come too soon ? How many you wasted in 
vain, sinful, foolish pursuits, while heaven was unse- 
cured, and the soul unsaved ! You will soon be on 
the bed of death, young men, — how soon none can 
tell. And would it not be well to try to look at 
things now as you w r ill look at them when you come 
9 



98 young man's fkiend 

to the bed of death, when you are but an inch from 
eternity ? < < An inch from eternity ? " And is it 
possible you will ever be brought so near eternity as 
that ? An inch from eternity ! An inch from eter- 
nity ! And what will you do when so near as that ? 
What will you do when you are so near the great 
white throne as that? 

I tell you, young men, that if you live among the 
temptations of this world without an interest in 
Christ, if you live so near to eternity and make no 
preparation for it, you commit an awful mistake. A 
man said to me, not long ago, referring to a business 
transaction, " I made the mistake of my lifetime." 
Ah ! the mistake of your life may be made at the 
moment when you bid from you the loving Saviour, 
and reject eternal life. The mistake of a lifetime 
may be made in a single moment. 

" 1 am safe," you may say. No, you are not. 
Death is on your track ; Judgment waits for you ; 
Eternity is near. And will you go on, — go on to 
ruin ? 




LECTURE IV. 

OiN" THE CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 

He that walketli with wise men, shall be wise ; but a companion of fools 
shall be destroyed. Proverbs, xiii. 20. 

'OUNXJ people sometimes wonder how the 
minister of the Gospel, the religious editor, 
and the Christian teacher can know so much 
about the vices and temptations of the world. They 
think it very strange that those whose business it is 
to advance morality and exalt goodness, should be so 
well acquainted with the loathsome features and dis- 
gusting details of vice. So wise and good a man as 
Solomon seems to have been familiar with all the 
grades and degrees of crime. With the hand of a 
master he paints the portraits of the vicious, draws 
their characters to life, as if he had always been 
acquainted with them, and had made them a life- 
study. 

Go into his gallery of portraits for a moment, and 
look at the pictures of this natural delineation. 
There, right before you, hangs the Sluggard. He 



100 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 

sleeps late into the sunny summer day, turns on his 
bed and yawns, — " A little more sleep, and a little 
more slumber." 

Near by hangs the picture of a mischief-making 
man, censorious and ugly, uttering " grievous words 
to stir up anger." Painted before us is the coun- 
tenance, frowning and dark, the eye flashing with 
unholy and unnatural fire, the ear bent down, listen- 
ing to evil, the heart silent, but meditating mischief, 
and the whole man 

' Ready in gibes, quick-answered, and 
As querulous as a weasel." 

As the portrait hangs before you, you recognize it 
at once. You have seen the original a thousand times. 
There he hangs in all his odious features, — a person 
who 

" Devotes to scandal his congenial mind, 
Himself a living libel on mankind." 

Step along a little farther in this gallery, and you 
find a portrait of the proud man, clothed in fine robes, 
living in state * and saying, " Who is like me ? " The 
picture is full and true to life. The world and all it 
contains seem to have been made for him. The sun 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 101 

rises on one side of his home and sets on the other, 
and he counts the world too poor for him to live in, 
the earth too mean for him to tread on. In his step, 
in his look, in every gesture, appears his all-powerful 
master-passion — pride. It lifts his conscious head 
and inspires his conscious tread with dignity not his 
own. 

" Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine ? 
Earth for what use ? Pride answers, 'tis for mine ! 
Seas roll to waft me ; suns to light me rise ; 
My footstool, earth ; my canopy, the skies." 

Next, we come in that gallery, — for the Book of 
Proverbs is a complete moral picture gallery, — to 
the fair, fawning face of the hypocrite, with silly 
flattery and lying looks ; smiling on the prospered, 
but envious of their prosperity ; shedding crocodile 
tears for the afflicted, but rejoicing in their afflictions ; 
laughing within at the sight of grief, while 

" Before his face his handkerchief he spreads, 
To hide the flood of tears he cannot shed." 

This great master of the heart also gives us female 
likenesses, beautiful women, who minister only to 
the degradation of our race; the contentious woman, 
making her husband's home unhappy, wearing out 



102 young man's friend. 

his patience as water wears away a stone ; spoiling 
his disposition as rain the delicate colors in the fresco ; 
fretting and scolding at her children, and driving 
them from home into ways of vice ; setting the neigh- 
borhood on fire with her senseless tattle ; knowing 
everybody's business; meddling with everybody's 
affairs ; suspecting wrong where it does not exist, and 
poisoning the happiness of all that come within the 
circle of her influence ; — the vicious woman, who has 
built her house in the way to death, who paints her 
face and bedecks her form to catch the unwary ; who 
smiles, and bows, and watches to destroy ; who sees 
her victim, and goeth after him straightway, leading 
him like a fool to her house; — the virtuous woman, 
the pride of her husband, the joy of her children, a 
diamond set in pearls, whose price is above rubies. 
All these does he sketch with the utmost justice to 
the originals* 

I have selected the text in order to lead your minds 
to a subject of the utmost importance to the young ; 
for, of all that Solomon wrote, nothing could be more 
certain, nor of more consequence, than the truth 
found in this brief passage : ' ' He that walketh with 
wise men shall be wise ; but a companion of fools 
shall be destroyed." 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 103 

A young man who selects evil company, who asso- 
ciates with vile persons, is the companion of fools ; 
ay, he is a fool himself; and his destruction, if he 
continues in such associations, is inevitable. A 
young man may to a great extent have any associates 
he will. He may select the virtuous, the lovely, the 
pure, or the vicious and abandoned. There is no 
necessity which compels him to associate with bad 
men ; it is a matter of choice. Each man in life 
selects his own society, chooses his friends, and, 
if he selects unworthy companions, he only is to 
blame. 

To guard those who are forming acquaintances, let 
me lead your minds at this time to two points — The 
Dangers of Evil Company, and the Rules for the 
Selection of Proper Associates. 

I. Among the dangers of bad company we find — 
■ 1.-4 Damage to Reputation. — A man's reputa- 
tion is one thing ; a man's character is quite a different 
thing. A man's reputation is what others think of 
him; his character is what he really is. A man's 
reputation may be good ; his fair name may be un- 
tarnished ; not a stain may sully him in the estimation 
of others ; while his character may be black, hideous, 



104 young man's fkiend. 

and hateful. On the other hand, a man's reputation 
may be bad ; reports severely affecting his standing 
may be in circulation, and he may be a by- word on 
every lying tongue, when his character may be good 
and his heart pure. His character is one thing, — 
what he really is ; his reputation is another thing, 
what he seems to be. 

Reputation to every honest man is of great 
value, and those only who are lost to goodness will 
be willing to sacrifice this priceless jewel. Indeed, 
many men are more solicitous about their reputation, 
than of their characters. They are far more anxious 
to have the approval of their fellow-men, than they 
are to be strictly honest and upright. It will not 
hurt their feelings at all to do a mean, villainous deed, 
but it will trouble them exceedingly to be suspected. 

A man has a right to be jealous of his reputation ; 
he has a right to defend it wherever and whenever it 
is assailed. But a man's reputation is put in jeopardy 
at once by an association with bad men. He cannot 
go much in company with the vicious without being 
suspected of vice. It is an old maxim, that " a man 
is known by the company he keeps," and when we 
see young people associating with worthless and de- 
praved beings, we set them down as lost to integrity. 







CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 105 



This being the case everywhere, you see at a glance 
the danger in which a man's reputation is put who 
consorts with the vile and abandoned. He is judged, 
not by any particular acts he may do, but by his as- 
sociates, by the company he is found in. If you see 
a young man lounging in the streets, with his hat on 
one side of his head, in company with a half dozen 
i 'lewd fellows of the baser sort," persons who are 
known to drink or gamble or swear, you set him 
down, and you have a right to do so, on divine rule, 
as a person of like tastes and habits. The unclassical, 
and somewhat vulgar adage, " Birds of a feather flock 
together," is full of truth, and let a man associate 
with vile men and he will receive no credit for up- 
rightness. It is unnatural for a good, pious man to 
fraternize with vile, wicked people, and if he does so 
it is at the risk of his reputation. 

Let this consideration sink down into the heart of 
every young man. You hazard your reputation by 
associating with the wicked. With that unsullied, a 
young man may cut his way through life and arrive 
to eminence ; with that blasted, he may sink down 
into indolence and ignominy. The noblest names ever 
engraven on the rolls of fame, and to whom the 
world has looked as oracles of wisdom, commenced 



106 YOUNG BIAS'S FKIEND. 

life with nothing but an unstained reputation. 
Slander has aimed her poisonous darts ; Envy has 
woven her crown of thorns ; Malice has formed its 
weapons to strike them down ; Suspicion has uttered 
her shy inuendoes ; Satire has sharpened all its points, 
but, walking in the sunlight of integrity, all these have 
been powerless to harm. 

And if our young people would have this treasure, 
— a jewel beside which the Koh-i-noir of Victoria, the 
mountain of light, with its fabulous value, is but a 
child's toy, they must keep out of bad company. A 
bad companion is like a sheriffs flag, telling that 
something is bankrupt. 

2. A Maris Character is affected by his Asso- 
ciates. — We are all creatures of imitation and 
habit. We are so constituted that, imperceptibly to 
ourselves, others exert a mighty and mysterious in- 
fluence upon us. We may despise their characters, 
disown their deeds, and hate their sins, but while we 
live beneath their influence we shall be irresistibly 
drawn toward their moral status. Suppose you walk 
an hour arm in arm with a miller or a chimneysweep ! 
You do not like to be seen covered with soot or with 
the flour of the mill ; you may feel mortified to see 
your hands covered with the sooty black, or your fine 




CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 107 



coat dusted with meal. But if you come into contact 
with persons who have been thus employed, you must 
expect to bear the marks. Just so you may not ap- 
prove of the vices of a young friend ; you know he 
is bad, and do not design to fall into his habits, but if 
you come into contact with him, you will be smutted 
and soiled. Your own heart will catch his vileness ; 
your own habits will become irregular. It is a law 
of nature, " Like begets like," and every man bends 
himself unconsciously to the circumstances in which 
he is placed, and assimilates himself to the moral 
condition of things around him. So general is the 
operation of this law, that when we see a young man 
associating with the vile we are inclined to give him 
up. If he has not already fallen, we know he will 
fall. 

Young men, take care of your hearts. Your 
reputation is priceless, but your character is more than 
priceless. A man may lose his reputation, — Paul 
did, Baxter did, Luther did ; but with an untainted 
heart you can stand up and look the world in the face. 
Curran, the eloquent Irish orator, was taunted by a 
corrupt judge on account of his poverty and the 
smallness of his library, but, conscious of his integrity, 
he nobly replied : " My books are not numerous, but 



ai . 



108 young man's friend. 

they are select, and I hope they have been read with 
profit. I am not ashamed of poverty, but I should 
be ashamed of wealth, had I acquired it by servility 
and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at 
least be honest ; and should I ever cease to be so, 
many an example shows me that an ill-gained repu- 
tation, by making me more conspicuous, would only 
make me the more universally notorious and con- 
temptible." 

Character, to every young man, is true and noble 
riches. It is far better than reputation, for that is 
only a good appearance, but character is goodness it- 
self. But bad associates will undermine it, will sap 
it, will destroy it. Think not that you can keep a 
heart loyal to integrity while consorting with vile 
men. It is impossible ! You must keep clear of 
bad men, if you would not have a bad heart. You 
see how it is. In childhood, one bad boy will cor- 
rupt the hearts of all the boys in his neighborhood, 
and marvellously transform the habits of all the chil- 
dren that come near him. One vicious young man 
in a shop will exert an influence upon all the officers 
or clerks, making some peevish and discontented, 
others irregular and unsteady, others still obscene and 
profane. Evil is contagious. Let there come into 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 109 

a shop or store where there are twenty employes, 
another who is a re viler of religion, a jester at sacred 
subjects, and a violator of the Sabbath, and how soon 
do you see a change ! The first week his jests at 
religion will be coldly received or treated with dis- 
approbation ; the second week he will be heard with- 
out remonstrance ; the third week some will dare to 
jest and swear with him ; the fourth week he entices 
some to the theatre or some such place, and at the 
end of the year, the poison has gone through the whole 
company. The young men do not perceive the 
change, it has been so gradual. But the transforma- 
tion has been effected. The son of a praying 
mother, who, a year before, used every night to read 
the Bible that mother gave him before he left home, 
can now scoff at his mother's God. He who a year 
ago would have scorned the vile places where sinners 
meet, now spends all his surplus cash in visits to places 
of death. All is changed ; a destroyer has been there. 
Or perhaps the reverse of this may be true, which 
is as good an illustration of my proposition. That one 
vicious young man, by his association with that com- 
pany of pure-minded ones, is himself reformed. In 
spite of his own nature he becomes a better man. He 
goes to church ; he restrains his curses ; in the light 
10 



110 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 

of the example set him, he sees the benignity of 
goodness and the bliss of virtue, and is saved. 

The principle is a broad one, — we become good 
or bad like our associates. The purest stream of 
water that ever gushed from the bowels of the earth, 
will be discolored, polluted, poisoned, by passing 
through certain kinds of soil. So the stream of every 
human life, however pure the fountain may be, will 
be changed to bitterness and poison, if it is allowed 
to pour through the sluiceways of vice and degrada- 
tion. 

3. Evil Associates lead to the final Ruin of Body 
and Soul. — Though man is naturally depraved, he is 
not depraved in any such way as to make him commit 
outbreaking crimes. It is a man's nature to be 
alienated from God, but it is not his nature to murder 
his family, set his neighbor's house on fire, or commit 
suicide. These are things to which he is led by the 
company he keeps. Vice has various and successive 
steps. Some persons die before taking half of them ; 
others take the whole in a few years. As a man 
taking lessons in music may get tired and give it up 
before he has learned the musical scale, or another 
may go just far enough to sing some simple tunes, 
Coronation or Old Hundred, so a man entering a 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. Ill 

career of vice, may stop at the second or third act, 
and for years toy with crime, while another may take 
all the lessons in regular succession, and go down to 
infamy without losing a single step in the march. 

The first steps in vice are always pleasant ones. 
Those who devise mischief, gild and decorate the first 
act in the tragedy, to make it attractive. Did vice 
show its hideous features all at once, it would be so 
disgusting that no man would become vicious. Men 
would be frightened at the hideous shape, and hence 
wicked men set traps to decoy the young into ruin 
and disgrace. Those who become vicious are decoyed, 
deceived, and blinded. 

I remember years ago of a practice we had of 
going out on bright moonlight nights to shoot 
aquatic birds. We took a number of wooden 
ducks, and set them afloat upon the crystal 
waters, and in the silvery moonbeams they danced 
like things of life. Living birds, deceived by the 
device, came within the range of the fatal rifle, and 
were shot. So about half the evil companions men 
meet are decoys to lead on the young, to initiate them 
into the mysteries of crime, and bring them within 
the reach of destruction. Show a young man what 
he is coming to, and he would start back with horror. 



112 YOUNG man's friend. 

The wicked, who know the whole, do not tell it. 
There are decoys, and traps, and nets. 

" There 's many a spark in point and loom, 
Bedecked and wreathed in nature's bloom, 
That 's just a trap, — and every toy 
Is but a snare made to destroy." 

You know that some mercantile houses in large 
cities, employ what are called " drummers," or " run- 
ners," i. e. men to go around to the public hotels 
and other places of resort, and see those southern or 
western customers who may be this way for the 
purpose of trade. Many firms in some cities, I know 
not how it may be in all, derive a large part of their 
patronage from this source. I have known many a 
young man ruined in this way. His business is to 
go to the hotels, fasten himself on these patrons, go 
with them where they wish to go, treat them to drink 
if they wish for that, show them to the theatre, or * 
any haunt of sin. And thus often has the clerk 
himself fallen, a victim to habits which he once 
abhorred. 

So vice has " runners," and they spread themselves 
all through society. The city in which you live must 
be a strange city, if it is an exception. When the 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 113 

sailor steps upon the wharf, he meets a ' 6 runner " 
from some low den of vice, into which he is taken, 
and the money which should have gone to his wife 
and children is extorted from him, and he brings up 
at the " Home for the Fallen." 

The gambling hells have their " runners," and 
they fasten upon young men, especially those who 
have money in their own right, or who have access 
to the funds of their employers. 

The houses of infamy have " runners," and they 
haunt the depots and fasten upon unprotected females, 
who come in from the country, and find them homes. 
They haunt the hotels to meet strangers, who, away 
from the restraints of homer, may become easy victims. 
The ruin of character is a trade ; men and women 
enter into it for money, — a few cents, or a few 
dollars, often being the price of a soul. 

O men, could the mysteries of crime in large cities 
be unfolded to you, so that with a single glance 
you could take in the yawning gulf, you would start 
back with a cry of horror and dismay. You would 
see that your own children are not safe, that the 
" runners " of death are on almost every track. 

No matter where the evil begins ; it may be away 
up in the upper circles of society ; it may be just 



114 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 

upon the borders of innocence ; it always ends in the 
ruin of the body and the soul. You will find that 
the secret of the ruin of the young, in nine cases 
out of ten, is bad company. Eve got into bad com- 
pany, and lost Eden. Samson got into bad company, 
and lost his strength and had his eyes put out. Peter 
got into bad company, and denied his Lord. And if 
you would find one sentence to write on the forehead 
of every drunkard, on the wreck of every gambler, 
on the poor polluted heart of every harlot, in the 
cells of every prison, and over every scaffold, it would 
almost always and everywhere be the same, — " The 
work of evil company " 

A striking case of the influence of bad company 
is seen in the melancholy history of one of the un- 
fortunate men who have just been executed for the 
assassination of President Lincoln. I refer to young 
Payne, or Powell, as his real name was. Rev. Dr. 
Gillette, his spiritual adviser, has given to the public 
the steps of his downward course : ' ' His father was 
a Baptist minister. The convict had been from in- 
fancy brought up under religious influence. At 
twelve years of age he was by his own father conse- 
crated to God in Baptism, and became a member of 
the church. In direct opposition to the wishes of his 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 115 

family, he entered the Rebellion. For a time he en- 
deavored to retain his religious character, but became 
acquainted with Gilmore. This was his second step 
downwards. That was followed by his getting into 
Mosby's gang, which was far worse. His next com- 
panion was Booth. Dr. Gillette found Powell to be 
a young man of cultivated mind, ingenuous, frank, 
candid, and an earnest supplicant for Divine favor. 
In conversation, he referred to his mother and wept 
bitterly ; to his sisters ; to the pleasant seasons once 
enjoyed by him in the church, the Sabbath school, 
and the social circles. Powell frankly stated his con- 
viction of the enormity of his crime. The moment 
he fled from the house of Secretary Seward and leaped 
into the saddle of his horse, his mind was quickened 
into a realizing sense of the horror of the damnable 
deed which he had perpetrated, and he became mis- 
erably wretched, — life itself became loathsome." 

II. We now turn to another point, — to a brief 
consideration of some Rules for the formation of right 
associations. Some will fall into bad hands even with 
the utmost care, but a few simple rules will help the 
young who hear me in the proper selection of com- 
panions. 



116 young man's friend. 

1. Be careful where you find your Associates. — 
It does not follow that every man you meet in a 
Christian Church, or in the Sabbath school, is a 
good man ; nor does it follow that every man you 
meet in a tap-shop, or a circus, is a bad man. Bad 
men sometimes come to church, and good men some- 
times allow themselves to be found at bad places. 
But you may take it for granted, the world over, that 
men who are regular at church, consistent in their 
social and religious duties, are, exceptions granted, 
worthy associates. You may also conclude safely 
that those young men who hang around saloons, 
hotels, theatres, dance-halls, and the circus ; who 
spend fifteen hundred dollars per annum, when they 
only have a salary of ten hundred dollars ; who spend 
more on dress and frolicking than they do on their 
young wives ; who are better acquainted with the 
quality of cigars and wines, than with good books, 
and the literature of the Bible ; who joke and sport at 
religious things, and who can scoff at Christ, are 
suspicious, and poor stock from which to select asso- 
ciates. While you have no right to brand each man 
found at questionable places as a bad man, you have 
a right to suspect him. His being there is a just 
cause why you should hesitate to cultivate his ac- 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES, 117 

quaintance. If, then, you find men engaged in any 
pursuit of questionable propriety, or haunting places 
of doubtful character, your duty is plain, — have 
nothing to do with them. 

It is said that a monk once went to the theatre. 
It is pretty well understood now that all monks are 
not saints. While at the theatre, the devil appeared 
and said, " Come, go with me ; I want you." The 
monk replied, " O no, I am not in your service; I 
am a monk ; a servant of God." But, said the devil, 
"I find you on my ground ; if you were a monk, you 
would not be here ; I must take you." So, if a man 
is found on Satan's premises, you know he is not the 
man for you to associate with. He may claim to be 
a monk or a priest, a deacon or a minister, but don't 
trust him. He is not the friend you want ; there is 
something wrong; about him. 

2. Select no Person for a constant Associate whose 
Character is less reputable than your own. — It is 
sometimes necessary that we should associate with 
bad men in the business relations of life, or to 
do them good. Christ did. He mingled with pub- 
licans and sinners, and went into the houses of those 
who were under condemnation by Jewish law. But 
he did not select such persons for his companions 



118 YOUNG MAN'S FKIEND. 

and private friends. His course was a wise and 
judicious one, and when he was seated at the tables 
of Scribes and Pharisees, he was with men whose 
lives he abhorred, in order to teach them a better 
way. But when he wanted hearts that could sym- 
pathize with his heart, and souls that could join 
with his soul, he did not go to the proud homes of 
any of those old hypocrites, but out to the humble 
house of Lazarus, in Bethany, to meet there Mary 
and Martha. Peter, James, and John he selected as 
his chosen friends, his confidants, and counsellors. 

A young man, however much he may wish to ben- 
efit others, is not called on to associate with the vile, 
as constant companions. He should disregard all the 
distinctions of birth, blood, wealth, and station, and 
sometimes, perhaps, of mental culture, though that 
should not be done without thought, but he must not 
disregard differences in moral character and principle. 
As a general rule, a young man should endeavor to 
find associates better than himself, that they may lift 
him up to their level. Choose an associate below 
yourself, and he will drag you down, and make you 
like himself. The true idea is to level up, never to 
level down. Do not be afraid of being called set, 
exclusive, particular. It is an honest pride, a manly 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 119 

feeling of self-respect, which leads a person to seek 
associates better, purer, nobler than himself, and 
scorns to level down to the grade of those against 
whose sins his conscience utters a constant remon- 
strance. 

3. Surrender at once an Acquaintance which, 
when formed, proves to be injurious. — Sometimes 
we are forced to form acquaintance without a full 
knowledge of the person's character and habits. 
After we become intimate, we find frightful de- 
formities hiding under the polished exterior. The 
vulture had been decked in the plumage of the jay. 
But duty to ourselves compels us to break up such 
acquaintances at once. If we take poison into our 
mouths, it is no reason why we should keep it there. 
Nor should we keep a poisonous associate because we 
have become acquainted with him. While we daily 
pray, " Lead us not into temptation," we have no 
right to associate with any man who would put the 
temptation to us. If you have formed an acquaint- 
ance which you feel is not profitable, break it up ; if 
an associate proves unworthy, " cut him." You 
have no right to hesitate. 

4. Have no Associates whom you woidd be unwilling 
to introduce to your friends, and whose character 



120 YOUNG man's friend. 

you would not wish to have known to your 
relatives. If you do associate with such, there 
is something wrong. It has an ugly look for 
a young man to be ashamed to take his boon com- 
panions to church, or to his father's house, and no 
man should select a person for an intimate, or even a 
semi-intimate friend, whom in the best circles he 
would shun. He should select associates in whose 
society he would be proud to be seen in public ~No 
man would be ashamed to be known as having been 
on familiar terms with Washington or Watts, with 
Bunyan or Baxter, with John Knox or Martin 
Luther, with Milton or with Bacon, but anybody 
might be ashamed to have it known that he frater- 
nized with such men as Tom Paine or Abner 
Kneeland. If our associates are such that we are 
willing to meet them in the night, and skulk with 
them in the dark, but shun them in open daylight, it 
is prima facie evidence that something is wrong. 

5. Use Common Sense in the Selection of Friends. 
— Some persons do not. They are blind to all the 
faults of those with whom they associate. This 
is often so when associations are formed for life 
between the sexes. The judgment is put to sleep 
with drugs, while the affections, which have no eyes, 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 121 

are allowed to make all the decisions. The head 
is sent on a pilgrimage to Mecca or somewhere 
else, while the heart takes the empire. A man who 
is purchasing a house looks at it and examines it ; a 
man who is buying a watch tests its accuracy. The 
same thing should be done when forming associations, 
especially for life. What an idea for a woman to 
marry a drunkard, with the idea of reforming him ! 
Or a lazy man, with the idea of making him indus- 
trious ! A blasphemer, with the idea of teaching him 
to pray ! Poor, silly girl, how mistaken she is ! 
When a man builds his house, he goes to a mechanic 
with his plans and specifications, and makes his con- 
tract, and if, when the house is done, this thing and 
that thing are wanting, he must do without them. 
He has no right to expect anything that is not in the 
specifications. But a great many young people form 
acquaintances for life, and afterwards want changes 
made that are not in the specifications. Sometimes 
we hear a wife saying, " O, I have a wretched hus- 
band, and my life is so different from what I ex- 
pected ! " Ah, poor woman, you got all you bar- 
gained for. He was a wretched fellow when you 
married him, and you knew it, perhaps, and he is no 
better now. You might have known all this. And 
11 



122 YOUNG man's friend. 

a husband says, " On the whole, I am not half as 
happy as I thought I should be in the marriage re- 
lation ; this wife of mine turns out to be a far differ- 
ent person from my youthful dreams, and I am very 
unhappy." Well, who is to blame? You have got 
just what you bargained for. Your wife is as good 
now as she ever was. The fault is with you, sir. 
You did not know enough about her before you hur- 
ried her off to the minister. You say she is extrava- 
gant ! She always was. You say she is a coquette ! A 
dozen wounded hearts could have told that . But you 
would not hear, nor believe, nor consider. You fan- 
cied a pretty face, and married it, without seeing what 
kind of a wife you were to have. You are to blame. 
Ah ! if men about to form business copartnerships 
and money relations, and other associations, would 
exercise common sense, how much better it would 
be. There are enough people who have uncommon 
sense, genius, they call it, but O, for common sense, 
to deal with this plain, practical, common world ; this 
world, that may be poetic enough, for aught I know, 
but is also a great, grand, stern reality. 

How can I close without recommending to you 
a friend, — my best Friend. You feel the need of an 
acquaintance, — shall I introduce one to you, my 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 123 

young fellow-traveller ? He is honorable ; the son 
of a Kin of. He is wise ; he knows all things, He 
is mighty ; he built the world and can crush it to 
pieces. He is so pure, that his worst enemies could 
find no fault in him ; so good, that he died for his 
most bitter foes ! Shall I name him ? Jesus 
Christ ! Friend — that is his name ! Friend ! 
that is his character. Friend — 

" While lie lived on earth abased, 

' Friend of sinners ' was bis name ; 
Now, above all glory raised, 
He rejoices in the same." 

Now here he is, offering you royal honors, if you 
are only willing to receive them. Can I persuade 
any of you to make him your friend ? You are going 
out into life, young man, and life is full of tempta- 
tion, toils, and sorrows. Do you imagine that life 
will be always bright, that it has no dark side? Do 
you suppose you will not sometime go through seas 
of tears, and vales of weeping? Do you hope never 
to know grief? O, then, you will be mistaken. 
Life has sorrows, and they come not singly, but oft 
in crowds and clouds. Longfellow paints it truly, 
when he says — 



124 YOUNG man's friend. 

" Never stoops the soaring vulture 
On his quarry in the desert, 
On the sick or wounded bison, 
But another vulture, watching 
From his high aerial lookout, 
Sees the downward plunge, and follows ; 
And a third pursues the second, 
Coming from the invisible ether, 
First a speck, and then a vulture, 
Till the air is dark with pinions. 

" So disasters come not singly; 
But as if they watched and waited, 
Scanning one another 1 s motions, 
When the first descends, the others 
Follow, follow, gathering flockwise 
Round their victim, sick and wounded, 
First a shadow, then a sorrow, 
Till the air is dark with anguish." 

But this friend of mine has power to make the 
sorrow fly. Shall I introduce him ? There he is, 
saying, " If any man thirst, let him come unto me 
and drink." He was the friend of Saul of Tarsus, 
of Mary of Magdala, and he will be your friend. Do 
you know what this friend has done for you ? What 
he is willing to do for you ? He is willing to save 
you, — save you from your fears, from your foes, 



CHOICE OF ASSOCIATES. 125 

from your sins, from yourself. Do you ask if he is 
competent to save you ? O, yes — 

"If all the sin that men have done 

In will, in word, in thought, in deed, 

Since worlds were made or time begun, 
Were laid on one poor sinner's head, — 

The blood of Jesus Christ alone, 

Could for this mass of sin atone, 
And sweep it all away. 51 

. O, what a friend is this, and what a wonder that 
all men do not seek him ! 




LECTURE V. 

THE FAST YOUNG MAW. 
A young man void of understanding. Proverbs, vii. 7. 

|/VE often hear of the " Fast Young Man." 
These three words meet the eye almost 
every day, as we read the public journals ; 
they fall on our ears as we enter the counting-house, 
or walk along the street. The term, " a fast young 
man," is a very significant one. We apply it gen- 
erally to one who is breaking away from restraints, 
defying by his recklessness the common sentiments 
of the community, and displaying an uncommon 
haste in learning vicious habits, and becoming 
acquainted with depraved men. It is a term of 
reproach, and courted only by those who are " void 
of understanding." 

We all love to see a "fast sailing ship," spreading 
her snowy pinions to the gale and riding out to sea 
with all sail set. We love to see a "fast horse," 
pursuing his way and distancing all competitors. It 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 127 

is creditable to a ship to be a fast sailer ; she will 
have larger freight, and more passengers will crowd 
her decks. It is creditable for a horse to be a fast 
racer; it will increase his value, and lead his owner 
to guard him with greater care. But with a fast 
young man it is not so. Nobody sets a higher value 
on him, on account of his fast proclivities. 

It is to the case of the ' ' Fast Young Man " that 
I now invite your attention. We live in an age of 
progress. Men eat fast, work fast, travel fast, and 
live fast. A man's life is measured by the speed at 
which he goes, and steam seems to be the propelling 
power in all the movements of our race. It would 
be well if progress was confined to learning, freedom, 
Science and art, and the things which elevate in this 
life and fit for the life to come. It would be well if 
progress was the attendant of such things only as 
make men wiser, happier, and more like God. But 
it is not so. There is a progress downward as well 
as upward ; progress in error, crime, shame, and ruin. 
Men go to destruction by steam ; hasten to ruin at 
rail-car speed. The age which furnishes new inven- 
tions in science and art, gives increased facilities for 
crime, and good men are not the only ones who 
become more curious and cunning as the years roll 



128 YOUNG man's feiend. 

on. The wicked are inventive ; they bring to their 
aid all the genius and skill of the age to furnish 
facilities for doing wrong. The complete ruin of a 
man occupied some time, years ago. Half a cen- 
tury back in time, demoralization worked slow. It 
was a long process, generally, to hunt a man down 
from his integrity, to destroy his manhood, to imbrute 
his whole nature, and make him the abject slave to 
lust and passion. But as the world has advanced, 
and men have become more shrewd, the work of ruin 
has gone on with greater speed, and has been done 
more surely and effectively. Men of science have 
invented machines to tunnel through gigantic moun- 
tains ; they have discovered various processes for 
breaking and working bars of iron ; they have agents 
for draining marshes, turning the course of rivers, 
and bowling out the contents of the sea. So there 
have been invented machines, in the moral world, to 
tunnel through characters that men deemed impreg- 
nable ; processes for breaking the heartstrings, drain- 
ing the breast of man of all its generous impulses, 
and filling up the waste with the most ruinous pas- 
sions and lusts ; agencies for turning the affections 
into new courses, away from home, away from truth, 
away from God, into channels the banks of which are 
strewed with wrecks of the lost. 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 129 



Who would have thought, a century ago, of the 
hellish devices to ruin men ? Who would have imag- 
ined that crime in hio;h life and low life would have 
become so prevalent? That it would-be so bold and 
open in its advances ? That it would dress itself in 
such magnificence, and arm itself with such power? 

I propose to take up at this time the ' l fast young 
man," and follow him through his childhood and 
youth, until his course is run and his race is finished. 
As I glance from scene to scene, your own minds will 
furnish illustrations, for you will remember instances 
of young men, who have squandered their property, 
wrecked their characters, killed by cruelty their 
parents, and destroyed themselves. Many of you 
will not be obliged to go beyond your own circle of 
acquaintance, or the limits of your own store and 
workshop, to find " fast young men." 

Coming then at once to the subject, I remark : — 
1. The fast young man is fast in getting away from 
home and beyond the ivholesome restraints of the fireside. 
This disposition is often manifested very young in life. 
The child, as soon as he can talk fluently, will begin 
to exhibit a desire to get beyond the reach of his 
parents, and when the boy reaches the age of ten or 
twelve years, he has in many instances learned to 



130 YOUNG man's friend. 

spend his evenings away from home. Where he is, 
the parents do not know. He is sometimes at the 
shop of a neighbor, especially if that neighbor has 
around him in the evening, sitting on the heads of 
barrels, on the counter, or around the stove, a half 
dozen frolicking young men ; or he may be lounging 
around the door of the theatre, seeing the crowds as 
they pass in ; or he may be setting up pins in the 
bowling alley at sixpence an hour ; or watching outside 
of some dancing establishment, listening to the excru- 
ciating music, or to the sound of the harlots' feet as 
they patter upon the elastic floor. 

Soon this ripens into a desire to be away from 
home altogether ; and the fast boy, for he is nothing 
more, wants to go to a trade, or into a city store, 
where he will be under none of the restraints of 
home. Now, why is this ? Home should be one of 
the most precious places on the earth ; all that is 
entrancing in music and poetry, all that is holy and 
soul-saving in religion, should cluster around home. 
And if home be what it should be, there will be no 
place there for the outgush of unholy desires, and the 
outbursts of malevolent passions. It will be a spot 
where vice does not intrude, and into which the 
destroyer will seldom dare to penetrate in pursuit of 
his victims. 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 131 

But home is too dull for the fast boy. There is no 
smoking, no swearing, no obscene conversation 
allowed in that sanctuary, and he wishes to be away 
as much as possible. Its very purity will send him 
out when once his own mind is tainted with impurity, 
and what should be its chief attraction will lead him 
to seek the society of strangers. And where will the 
fast boy be found ? When home loses its attraction 
where does he go ? What company does he seek ? 
You all know. He is found on the corners of the 
streets, lounging on fences, in the doorway of 
churches, going in and out of religious meetings, 
disturbing the worship, hanging around railroad 
depots, whistling and swearing at political meetings, 
trotting through the mud in torch-light processions, 
following military companies, loafing about firemen's 
musters, — anywhere, everywhere else but at home. 

Thus boys are laying the foundation for all the bad 
habits which so often cluster around and disfigure 
youth, and which make the worst and most degraded 
of men. Sometimes parents encourage this by send- 
ing children out to all the night performances, con- 
certs, lectures, and exhibitions that can be found; 
teaching them to dance, introducing them to the 
theatre, and paving the way to shipwreck and ruin. 



132 young man's friend. 

And when home has become distasteful to the lad, 
when the countenances of father and mother have no 
charms, when the sister's voice has lost its music, 
w T hen the fireside has been robbed of its beauty, and 
the home sanctuary has no magic, then the young 
man is on a lee shore ; one of the main anchors is 
gone, and he has taken the first long plunge in the 
downward career of the fast young man. 

2. He is fast in finishing his education. There is 
only one season of our life when a systematic course of 
education is secured. A man should learn life long, 
and go on in the improvement of his mind until he 
dies ; yet within a very few years, at the commence- 
ment of his life, is laid in systematic study the foun- 
dation of what he afterwards acquires. But the great 
mass of young men are in feverish haste to finish their 
school-days, and get out into the world. On an 
average our boys do not acquire one third of the ed- 
ucation they might, but hurry away from school into 
stores, or to trades, while schools and schoolbooks 
are thrown to persons still younger. It is natural 
for the boy, who does not know the value of learning, 
to feel thus ; but that his father and mother, who 
have seen so much more of life, who know so much 
better than he does the value of education, should al- 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 133 

low him thus to break away from school at so early 
an age, is very strange. The lad who is anxious 
to shorten his school-hours, get away from the 
restraints of his teachers, is pursuing a course that 
affects his whole life. School-hours lost are never 
regained, and many a merchant, to-day, bewails and 
deplores the misguided fondness of the parents who al- 
lowed him to have his own way, and leave school before 
he had secured sufficient education for the business 
purposes of life. Go into the counting-house and the 
store, and how many cases do you find in which busi- 
ness men are entirely dependent on their clerks. 
Their own education has been neglected, and now 
they are at the mercy of their hired men. 

Some boys are unwilling to stay in school even 
until they are old enough to go to a trade, or be put 
into a store. They beg and tease until the indulgent 
parent takes them out of school, and they are allowed 
to spend one or two years in indolence, learning 
nothing but bad habits, and earning nothing but a 
future of infamy. Take a boy from school at the age 
of twelve or fourteen years, and let him spend one 
year doing as near nothing as possible, and in nine 
cases out of ten you have ruined your son, made an 
unprincipled, rude, vagabond boy of him, and stamped 
11 



134 YOUNG man's friend. 

upon him habits that he will never outgrow. And 
when he h A from school, and has a year of 

indolence before him, he has taken the second step 
in the career of the fast young man. 
/N 3. Ee is fast in forsaking the sanctuary. Thie 
the third step. He has broken away from home, 
away from school, and now he forsakes the sanctuary, 
where his father long has worshipped. Attendance 
upon the sanctuary is one of the most effectual safe- 
guards of the young. TThen a man breaks away 
from church services, and the restraints of the house 
of God, he generally : t to ruin. The sanctu- 

ary is doing more to-day to prevent this country from 
becoming a besotted, brutalized, Sodomite country 
than all the laws made, all the moral and benevolent 
societies formed, and all the books, tracts, and nc 
papers written and printed. The house of G 
more to roll back the tide of crime, check the unbri- 
dled license of sin, than anything else. But the 
young man gete an idea that it is all folly to go to 
church : he is the son of a sainted father, who has 
gone up to heaven; of a mother, who yet lives 
pray for him, and weep over his waywardness ; but 
he thinks it beneath his dignity, a sort of libel on 
manhood, for him to go to church, where he he 



THE FAST YOUNG MA>\ 135 

nothing of the drama, the dance, business, and spet~ 

ulc'T jurch- 

bell often wakes him from his morning nap : the 
forenoo lly, insipid stork 

yellow-covered romances, or flash paper rican -^ 

manufacture, or in drinking vile slim 

5and, and Alexander Duma 
in riding, walking, sailing, or 
from church to church, the next thing to 
nothing, and in the evening he or 

falls tore, to which 

without interest. This is the Sabbath-day history 
of hundreds of our young men. 

and greatest men who have ever L 
have loved the hom rod, and few Lav 

names that have lived with fragrance through the 
cha: ears, that wer r ; n who 

the Sabbath and attended the sanctua: 

tendency : it 
makes 
hap d in life: it blesses children a 

3 families side by side, 
and let one attend the sanctuarv and the other stay 
away, and you will fi: r things being equal, 

that the church-going family is the bar 



136 YOUNG man's friend. 

ordered, best educated, and most contented. Take 
two young men, clerks in the same store, appren- 
tices in the same shop, of equal culture, and the one 
who goes to church will have a nobler mind, a truer, 
better character, be more respected and beloved by 
those around him, and more trusted by his employer. 
There may be exceptions, as there are to all rules, but 
this you will find to be a general principle. But the 
fast young man will not go to church ; if he does, it 
is half a day to some place where a false Christian- 
ity is preached, — so false that it does not include 
repentance for sin, faith in Jesus Christ, salvation by 
grace, a new heart, and a right spirit. He breaks 
away from the Puritanical creed of his fathers, and 
shuns the place where his sins are reproved, his 
conscience aroused, and his judgment convinced of 
the folly and wickedness of his course. And when 
he comes to this, he is again out at sea, he has cast 
off all moorings, and is on the broad ocean. 

4. He is fast in learning bad habits. Bad habits 

i 
are an indissoluble fraternity. A man never long 

had one bad habit, and only one. One bad habit 

will breed a thousand more, and if a man has one 

single bad habit to-day, he will have more to-morrow. 

The course of the fast young man in forming bad 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 137 

habits, you see illustrated every day. He first begins 
with smoking, a habit which, if not positively sinful, 
is surely leading young people to habits that are 
sinful, useless and expensive, troublesome and debas- 
ing. It often forms in a young person an appetite 
for strong drink, and is a species of indulgence which, 
though it does not intoxicate, leads to dissipation and 
sorrow. The mere expense of smoking should lead 
a young man to avoid it. I was advising a young 
man the other day to take a seat in the sanctuary. 
He replied, "I would like to; I always went to 
church till last year, but times are so desperate I 
cannot afford it." " Do_. you smoke?" I asked. 
" O yes," was the reply. " How much do you 
smoke ?" "Well, about two cigars a day, — one 
after dinner, and one just before retiring at night." 
" What do cigars cost?" " About six cents apiece, 
and on Sundays I smoke two or three extra, and of 
course I am obliged to give away two or three every 
week." "Well," I said, "let me reckon; — two 
cigars every day, and two given away, and two used 
extra on the Sabbath, amounts to nine hundred and 
thirty-eight, — these, at six cents apiece, would come 
to the snug little sum of $ 56.28 ; more than enough 
to hire a whole pew in the house of God." He 



138 young man's friend. 

says he smokes two extra cigars on the Sabbath 
day ; that is the effect of staying at home, and having 
nothing to do, or going to a club-room, or armory, 
or engine-house. Well, let him lay aside the money 
for those two extra cigars, and he has the sum of 
$ 6.24, — enough to secure him a most eligible seat 
in the sanctuary. Suppose a man keeps on smoking 
thirty years, indulging his useless habit all that time, 
what a fortune he loses ! In that time his cigars cost 
him $ 1,688.40, besides all the lost interest on such 
a sum. 

From smoking, the fast young man learns to 
swear. Now and then a horrid oath will roll out, at 
times when the cigar is not in his mouth. With- 
out fear, he will call on the name of Jesus in deris- 
ion, or challenge the Almighty to blast his soul 
forever. I dare not repeat the sinner's language. 
You have heard him curse his family, himself, his 
friends ; you know how his profanity slips out at all 
times ; you are shocked and amazed at it. I can see 
how a man may love to smoke, make a chimney of 
his throat, and a smoke-pipe of his lips ; I can see 
how a man may love to drink a social glass ; but how 
an intelligent man can swear and curse I do not 
understand. Why, I should as soon think of com- 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 139 

mitting suicide ! What! call on God, — the God 
who is able to do it, — to blast my eyes, to damn my 
soul, to send me or my friends to hell ! What a 
wretch a man must be to call on God to do any of 
these things ! And yet hundreds are doing it every 
day of life. Is it gentlemanly? No ! Is it brave? 
No ! Is it musical ? No ! Is it polite ? No ! Is 
it decent ? No ! Is it safe ? No ! 

Then the fast young man learns the way to the 
theatre. He hears his associates talking about the 
drama, and actors, and prima donnas, and benefits, 
and stars, and all these things. And he goes, night 
after night, and swallows down into his soul the pol- 
luted dregs of the stage. Now and then he is ob- 
liged to blush and hide his head for shame at the 
wantonness of the exhibition ; now and then he feels 
mortified at the coarseness of the comedy, but he gets 
used to it, and every night he sits in the pit or in the 
box, having his soul hardened, and his once pure 
heart corrupted. 

He then finds the way to the low dancing hells, 
sinks of pollution, that in Pagan Rome would have 
been shut up as plague spots, leprous stains, only to 
be blotted out for the public good. He is now a fast 
young man in full blossom. An immense ring 



140 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEKD. 

flashes on his "finger ; a pin of great magnitude rests 
on a soiled ruffle ; a sword cane, lewd companions, 
bad books, and a ruined character — these are all his! 

Then drinking follows, and the child of tears and 
prayers soon becomes a mean, loathsome carcase; 
reeling, bloated, staggering down to perdition. 
Gambling and licentiousness bring up the rear, like 
two gaunt demons, riding upon death's pale horse, 
driving before them a willing victim down to hell. 

The only way for a man to be safe is to have no 
bad habits ; they breed like frogs in Egypt. The 
playhouse, the circus, the dancing hall, the brothel, 
the gambling hell, the tap-shop, are all on one line, 
— a sort of electric circle ; the keepers have hold of 
hands ; they are all parts of one infernal system. 
The flashy, foreign actor who rides in his carriage, 
and who fares sumptuously every day, may not be 
willing to speak to the keeper of the low gambling 
den, but they are both links of the same chain, only 
they are at different ends. 

5. He is fast in making and spending money. Bad 
habits are expensive, and demand much money. Let 
me estimate: Cigars, $ 56.28 ; theatre tickets one 
night per week, $ 50 ; occasional balls find cotillon 
parties, $ 50, and thus on to the end of the catalogue. 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 141 

And many of our fast young men have very small sala- 
ries. They are not princely merchants ; fast young 
men seldom get rich. They are young men who 
have just income enough for frugal living. Conse- 
quently money must be obtained somewhere. There 
are three ways of getting it, — gambling, forgery, 
embezzlement. I think I hazard nothing when I say 
that our young men, who become dishonest, are 
not naturally so ; they have not that badness of heart 
that would lead to this ; their reasonable expenses are 
but small, and they ought to live within their means. 
Their bad habits do the work ; the theatre, the ball- 
room, the cigar shop, and the social glass demand 
money, and it must come. It is not any inherent, 
natural dishonesty, but the demand of these bad 
habits. This is what leads to so much dishonesty. 
The young man is not so much to blame as the 
tempters that have spread the snare, and hung out 
the bait. 

I would not encourage a miserly disposition, — let 
a young man enjoy as he goes along in life ; but, aside 
from all the reasonable enjoyments, how much is 
spent for the mere gratification of lust ! Who sup- 
port all these gilded saloons? Who pay for the 
stained glass doors, and mammoth lanterns that hang 



142 young man's friend. 

out over them ? Who supports the circus clown, with 
his spotted face and heart ? Who support the rumsel- 
ler, the stage actor, and the dancing master? Young 
men who have widowed mothers in the country! 
Young men who think they cannot afford a seat in 
church I Young men who cannot see how they can 
lay up a dollar for the future ! They are supported 
by young married men whose pale wives sit up late 
for them, and whose children are poorly clothed ! 
One half the money thus squandered would light up 
the old age of that kind mother with smiles of hope ; 
would make that wife and child free-hearted and 
happy ; would get you stocks in banks, or deposits in 
safe institutions, and save multitudes from degrada- 
tion and ruin, and make them ornaments to virtuous 
society. 

Within a short time we have had some striking 
illustrations of the influence of fast habits on men 
who have stood high in the commercial world, but 
who, lured on by the deceptive chimeras of speculation, 
have entered into monstrous frauds, and, being de- 
tected, have been overwhelmed in ruin. What a 
record one single week presents us. Let that week 
be one in August, of the year in which this work is 
published. We first have the robbery of the Phenix 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 143 

Bank. A trusted party, who stood high in the affec- 
tions of his friends, in whom the greatest confidence 
was reposed by his employers, became the victim of 
a designing woman. Her demands on him for money 
were followed by the robbery of the bank. Another 
became involved, — a youth of estimable character, 
and the fraud went on, until the robbery of half a 
million of money had been consummated. Exposure 
came. The principal welcomed it as the means of 
escape from a tyranny worse than imprisonment or 
death. The young and gifted accomplice committed 
suicide, and hurried unbidden into the presence of 
his God. 

A day or two rolled on, and a monstrous fraud was 
discovered in Wall Street, that sent panic to every 
broker's board in the land. A young man, of only 
four and twenty years of age, was detected in having 
committed a fraud of five millions of dollars in gold. 
He was the son of a wealthy sire ; he was the hus- 
band and father of a loving family ; he was a model 
of business men ; he was temperate in his habits, and 
consistent in his living. But the demon of specula- 
tion seized him. He embarked in the ruinous adven- 
ture, and fraud followed fraud, until the mammoth 
sum, which would have been deemed respectable by 



144 YOUNG man's friend. 

the Rothschilds or the Barings, had been disposed 
of. 

Other cases of a similar kind but of less extent, 
crowd that one week. It seems as if the fast habits 
of men were culminating in monstrous frauds and 
making the week a ruinous judgment day. And how 
many weeks are like it. What bank frauds, what 
railroad robberies, what post-office villainy, what 
wrongs and crimes in all walks of life, growing out 
of the fast habits of the young. 

6. He is fast in getting through life to the judgment. 
It is often said, we shall not die until our time comes, 
but the Bible assures us that the wicked shall not live 
out half their days. Not a few people kill themselves 
by their bad habits and vices. Look at a young man 
who drinks. In former times a man could drink year 
after year, but now he dies in five or six years. He 
formerly drank pure liquors ; now he swallows a 
decoction of poisons, — logwood, prussic acid, and 
similar ingredients. Look at him ! Day by day 
death does its work upon him, until his bloodshot 
eyes, bloated visage, and staggering tread pro- 
claim him a fit subject for delirium tremens. His 
frame is bowed, his constitution is ruined, his heart is 
corrupted, his conscience seared, and he drops into 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 145 

the grave without having lived out half his days. 
I need not specify the ways in which man may work 
himself to death, eat himself to death, or drink him- 
self to death, but thousands are destroying their 
beautifully formed bodies their wonderfully gifted 
minds, by brutish, sensual indulgence, worthy only 
of fiends and devils. 

And soon they will find themselves before the great 
judgment-seat to answer for all the wrongs done here 
on earth, for the misspent time and abused privileges. 
And it will be found that they have been fast in get- 
ting there. They have dashed down the barriers of 
prudence, reason, conscience, and revelation. They 
have overleaped obstacles, and been impetuous in their 
haste to arrive at the terrors of the day of doom. 

Is there a fast young man present now ? By ' ' fast 
young man," I mean one who has broken away from 
home, left the sanctuary, cast aside the Bible, and 
has become a smoking, swearing, Sabbath-breaking, 
theatre-going, reckless young man. Let me speak to 
him as a brother, bound to the same judgment. Let 
me appeal to him to behold the beauty of piety ; the 
excellence of a good moral and religious life. Let 
me ask him how he will stand in that awful day when 
God shall reveal himself from heaven as judge? 
13 



146 YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 

Soon it will come ; soon you will stand before the 
great white throne ! How will you look then upon 
wasted life, — for wasted it will be if you spend it as 
I have now described. Let me ask you, brother 
man, what will be your emotions when the great 
Shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. 

" When the Judge descends in light, 
Clothed in majesty and might ; 
When the wicked quake with fear, 
Where, O where, wilt thou appear ? " 

I can do no better in concluding than to cite to 
you a few illustrations of fast young men. Our first 
shall be one from Scripture. A man became rich, 
and he said to his soul, " Soul, thou hast much goods 
laid up ; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." 
But God said unto him : " Thou fool, this night thy 
soul shall be required of thee." It was plain lan- 
guage, but such as might be addressed with perfect 
propriety to thousands of young men, who are living 
alone for pleasure. He had made money fast, and 
now he determined to live fast, have a sumptuous 
table, spread rich feasts, ride in a carriage, be a leader 
of fashion. But the great voice of God from on high, 
said: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be re- 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 147 

quired of thee." You know how such a man would 
die ; you know what sounds would haunt his dying 
bed, and you know where he would go to when the 
last hour came. Yes, you know ! 

The second case shall be from later days, — a name 
well known to you as one of the most gifted young 
men of his times, — author of the Raven, who de- 
bauched himself, shocked his friends, and destroyed 
his soul, by his rapid career of dissipation. Read 
that man's history, and you see the wreck of a splen- 
did intellect, the awful ruin of a mighty soul. You 
see that intellect steeped in dissipation ; you see that 
soul given over to passion. 

And another we have in him whose eyes were 
closed by a harlot on the banks of the Pacific, the 
author of " Dow's Patent Sermons," who began his 
downward career by burlesquing the house of God, 
and the preaching of the gospel. He went down step 
by step until the light of a noble mind was quenched, 
and he died as the fool dieth, in the arms of loath- 
some pollution, the companion of vile persons, in 
squalid poverty, in filth and degradation ; abandoned 
of men, accursed by God. How sad the picture ; 
and yet, sad as it is, it might well stand for some who 
yet live, reviling religion and trampling on the 
Sabbath. 



148 young man's friend. 

Do you need other cases? You find them in 
yonder prison, you see them reeling along our streets, 
— young men void of understanding, who are deep- 
ening the woes of human life and making sorrow for 
eternity. 

Is there such a young man here, w T ho is con- 
tracting the bad habits I have enumerated? Void 
of understanding? A slave to appetite and lust? 
Let me tell him he will come to sorrow here, and to 
sorrow hereafter. The fast young man will stop at 
last ; he will stop, and think, ay, and pray, too ! 
Where ? < < Where ? " do you ask ! At the judgment- 
seat ; before the great white throne ! 

You have heard of the Gulf Stream, — " a vast and 
rapid ocean current, issuing from the basin of the 
Mexican Gulf and Caribbean Sea, doubling the 
southern cape of Florida, pressing forward to the 
northeast, in a line almost parallel to the American 
coast ; touching on the southern borders of the banks 
of Newfoundland, and at some seasons partially pass- 
ing over them ; thence w r ith increasing width and 
confusion, traversing the whole breadth of the Atlan- 
tic, with a central direction toward the British Isles ; 
and finally losing itself by still wider diffusion in the 
Bay of Biscay and upon the long line of the Nor- 



THE FAST YOUNG MAN. 149 

wegian coast. Its temperature is heated, and the 
vessel that gets into it is liable to be drifted from her 
course." 

There are in morals two gulf streams, — one draws 
up to heaven, and the other down to woe. On which 
are you floating, — the mistaken, fatal stream, or on 
the broad, deep river of life ? 

How many are mistaking all that is pure, noble, 
elevated, and divine ! Fast habits do not make a 
man, — O, no ! 

" A truthful soul, a loving mind, 
Full of affection for its kind, 
A spirit firm, erect, and free, 
That never basely bends the knee, 
That will not bear a feathers weight 
Of Slavery's chain for small or great, 
That truly speaks from God within, 
That never makes a league with sin ; 
That snaps the fetters despots make, 
And loves the truth for its own sake ; 
That worships God and Him alone, 
And bows nowhere but at his throne ; 
That trembles at no tyrant's nod, 
A soul that fears no one but God ; 
And thus can smile at curse or ban ; 
That is the soul that makes a man." 



150 young man's fkiend. 

My young friends — Be Men ! The world is call- 
ing for men. The church is calling for men. If 
you have energy, force of character, and must go fast, 
be sure you go in the right direction ; in the line of 
human improvement, in the course of moral devel- 
opment, toward heaven, toward God. 



LECTURE VI. 

OK" INVESTMENTS. 
Buy the truth, and sell it not. Proverbs, xxiii. 23. 

CHE world is full of speculators. Men specu- 
late in gold, the love of which is the root of 
evil, and in bread, the staff of life ; in cotton, 
that deposed monarch, and in coin, that is trying to 
grasp the broken sceptre ; in the flesh of human 
beings, who are sold like wild beasts, and in the 
harmless cattle upon a thousand hills ; in eastern city- 
lots, and in western prairies ; in Colorado mines, and 
Pennsylvania wells of oil ; in ships that are afloat, 
and in tenements that are being reared on dry land. 
There is nothing in which men will not speculate ; 
in Polyglot Bibles and minnie rifles ; in whiskey, and 
wisdom, and wit ; in man's conscience, and woman's 
virtue ; in hopes of heaven, and fears of hell. If a 
man is a giant or a pigmy, he becomes a subject for 
the speculator. Anything outside the humdrum of 
life is put up at auction. A general who climbs to 



152 YOUNG man's friend. 

greatness, falls into the hands of stock-jobbing poli- 
ticians, and every Tom Thumb becomes the stock-in- 
trade of the showman. 

A speculator is not necessarily a dishonest man. 
A showman is not always a mountebank. A spec- 
ulator may be as upright as a merchant engaged in 
legitimate trade ; and a showman may be as useful 
in the community as men of a dozen other profes- 
sions. It is the insane risk, and the frequent dishon- 
esty that makes the name of speculator so odious in 
many circles. Perhaps there never was a time in 
the history of our nation, when a few men reaped 
such immense gains at the expense of the many, as 
during the late war. The Wall Street brokers 
gamble in gold until our paper currency seems on 
the verge of ruin ; a merchant prince in New York 
sweeps the market of goods to the extent of a million, 
at one effort ; the paper manufacturers combine, and 
run up their manufactures to a price so high that 
almost every newspaper in the land is in danger of 
bankruptcy; men who have old vessels, hardly lit 
for seals to live in, sell them to Government at 
immense prices. The time of war was very conven- 
ient for speculators, and fortunes were made as they 
were never made before. 



OX INVESTMENTS. 153 

A period like that breaks up the laws of trade, and 
changes the direction of capital. Money seeks 
investments in new ways, and wealth concentrates in 
strange directions. Men and women, who have a few 
hundreds or thousands to invest, are looking this way 
and that to see what stocks will pay best, and what 
investments will be most secure. Sometimes cap- 
ital is seen tending toward trade, sometimes toward 
-tocks, and sometimes toward real estate. There 
are not a few to whom the advance in stocks would 
be more welcome news than the capture of a city, 
and who would grieve more over the fall of two per 
cent in some bank or railroad investments than over 
the loss of ten thousand men in battle. I think I do 
not misjudge, when I affirm that many Christian men 
read the monetary article in the morning paper with 
far more interest than they ever read the Bible, and 
welcome certain favorable indications in the list of 
jij quotations with more heartfelt satisfaction than they 
ever contemplated a revival of religion. 

There are certain forms of speculation which 
dreadfully narrow a man's mind ! AYe hear much 
said about men of ' ' one idea ! " YTe apply that 
term generally to men who have entered with heart 
and soul into any one moral cause. If a man be- 



154 YOUNG man's friend. 

comes enlisted in the " Temperance Reformation," 
and has his heart set on fire by viewing the desola- 
tions made by strong drink, we say he is a " one- 
idea man." If a man is stirred up with sympathy 
for oppressed humanity, and excites himself to give 
liberty to down-trodden millions, we call him a " one- 
idea man." But a man, to enter with all his soul 
into the work of saving men from vice, lifting hu- 
manity up to God, breaking the fetters of slavery, 
casting down the thrones of tyrants, emancipating 
mind from the thrall of past darkness, must be a man 
of many ideas, and each one of them brilliant as the 
gems of the Orient. No, they are the men of one 
idea, who see everything through one per cent a 
month ; to whom war is dreadful only because it cuts 
off cotton, or interferes with commerce, and to whom 
peace is a blessing only because it allows trade to 
return to its normal state. There is a race of mer- 
chants growing up, completely men of one idea, ana 
that idea sordid, mercenary, and selfish, — gold. 
The man w r ho enters a great moral cause, and be- 
comes in that an enthusiast, a fanatic, if you please, 
has at heart a noble, godlike idea, even if he has but 
one. There are some single ideas as immense as the 
human soul, as grand as God's throne, as awful as 



ON INVESTMENTS. 155 

eternity. But the one idea of many men may be all 
shut up in an iron safe ; written in one line in a bank 
ledger, or spelled out in one single word of four 
letters — cash ! 

But it is to investments on a broader scale that I now 
invite your attention. Every young man that com- 
mences life in whatever profession, — law, medicine, 
theology, mechanics, fine arts, or trade, — goes out to 
make investments, in comparison with which gold is 
sordid dust, and stocks, and bonds, and mortgages 
are but worthless trash. Every man brings to his 
life-work a wealth which no banks can treasure, 
which no stock certificates can indicate, and which 
no reverses can sweep away. 

Let us for a few minutes take an inventory of the 
young man's intellectual and moral goods, that we 
may see what he has to dispose of, and in what he 
may make the safest investments. Every young 
man who starts out from his father's home is rich, 
whatever may be the state of his purse, or the num- 
ber of dollars in his pocket, or changes of raiment in 
his wardrobe. And such as he is, he is all for sale. 
He is like a new house with the flag of the auctioneer 
hanging out over it. It is for sale ! The parlor, 
with its splendid finish ; the chambers, with their cosey 



156 YOUNG man's friend. 

comforts ; the roof and the basement, the outside and 
the inside ! It has never had an occupant, — it is 
for sale ! So a young man puts himself into the great 
market of life, as soon as he sets up for himself. Let 
us look at him ! 

I. He has immense wealth of intellect to be dis- 
posed of. If there is one admirable ftiing among our 
young people it is the nobility of mind, the indepen- 
dence of thought, which characterizes our age and 
land. The intellect of our times is brilliant, and 
flashes out in every direction. Our young men are 
embarking in every enterprise that requires mental 
power and intellectual development. There is not a 
star that hides itself in the silver girdle of night, which 
has not been sought out ; not a pebble embedded in 
the bowels of the earth, which has not been analyzed 
and classified ; not a shrub that grows, not a flower 
that blooms, which has not been studied and arranged ; 
not a subtle element, which has not been drafted into 
the great army of science ; not a power in the uni- 
verse, which has not been sought after and seized, 
and made the handmaid of mind, the servant of the 
creative brain, to do its will. The steamship, plough- 
ing the ocean ; the telegraphic wires, stretching from 
sculptured dome to marble mountain ; the machines 



ON INVESTMENTS. 157 

to gin cotton and weave it, to manufacture silks into" 
costly fabrics, to do the manifold works of life, is the 
achievement of mind. The halls of sculpture, the 
galleries of painting, are the results of genius. It is 
everywhere; brain, brain, brain, working ever, con- 
stantly, ceaselessly working, — inventing something, 
exploring something, developing something. 

Now this mass of intellect, given by God to young 
men, is to be invested somewhere. It is to be ex- 
pended in something. It cannot lie dormant or inac- 
tive. The spirit of the age is quickening it to a wonder- 
ful activity, and it must flow forth in some direction, 
heavenward or hell ward. It must develop itself in 
base, low attempts, or in noble, heavenly pursuits. 
Every young man is rich in intellect, and that wealth 
he is to invest. How much intellect has been 
invested in infamous treason, godless rebellion, 
and appalling crime ! How much is being put 
into schemes which, if successful, will never ben- 
efit any human being, or save any such, or make 
any heart happy ! What a wealth of intellect in 
the young men and women of our land ! What 
brain-power ! What intellectual force ! And how 
much of it, lying like money in a bank on deposit, 

drawing no interest, receiving no dividend. Sooner 
14 



158 YOUNG man's friend. 

or later it will be invested, — invested in schemes that 
will be made payable in heaven or hell. 

II. The young man has a vast wealth of conscience. 
I need not stop to define conscience, or to prove that 
every man has such an awful faculty in the soul. 
A rich man, with a debauched conscience, is poorer, 
far, than a poor man with a good conscience. I 
don't know as some merchants, in figuring up their 
riches would count conscience in for much ; but this 
I know, that a man who has a truthful, reliable, 
honest conscience, has wealth which fires cannot con- 
sume nor oceans engulf. 

The consciences of young men, especially those 
who have not had a rough contact with sin and de- 
pravity, are generally truthful. At the outset, the 
voice within echoes the voice of God. Searing con- 
science, and making it as worthless as leather, is the 
work of time. Invested in a bad way, it is wasted as 
money put into worthless stocks. And when con- 
science is wasted the whole man is wasted. A young 
man with an improved, well-invested conscience is 
a far different being from a man whose conscience has 
been squandered. I know no nobler spectacle than 
a youth who stands upright in his manly integrity, 
nor a sadder spectacle than that same youth when ar- 



ON INVESTMENTS. 159 

rived to age, run out in reputation, bankrupt in 
character, and destitute of conscience and moral 
sense. It is said that a painter wished to make two 
pictures which should stand in his gallery as master- 
pieces of art, — one to represent innocence and virtue, 
and the other vice and degradation. After a lono- search 
he found a beautiful boy, whom he took for his ideal 
of virtue. The face of young Rupert was as beauti- 
ful as an angePs ; not a mark of sin nor trace of 
woe could be read there, and when it was done and 
hung in the gallery it looked almost as if made to 
worship. Then the artist sought for his model of vice 
and wretchedness, but for a long time could find no 
one human countenance that had all the devilish marks 
which he wished to incorporate into his picture. He 
searched remote lands, he went to haunts of woe 
and abandonment, and at length in the purlieus of a 
great city he found his ideal, and he transferred the 
ghastly, loathsome features to the canvas. And 
when he had finished old Randal, and hung the 
picture up beside young Rupert, the two portraits 
were recognized as the representatives of the same 
original. Young Rupert had degenerated into old 
Randal, the beautiful boy had fallen to the crime- 
covered, vice-scorched man. This transformation 



160 young man's fkiend. 

is often seen. Go to our prisons and see the men 
who lie there in all the degradation of crime, and you 
gaze on the countenances of those whose hearts were 
once pure, and whose faces revealed nothing but good- 
ness. They have made bad investments of conscience, 
and are nothing but melancholy wrecks. There is a 
vast wealth of conscience here in this land. The 
souls of the young people are rich with this divine 
possession, this inestimable treasure. There is con- 
science here to-night for investment; there will be 
conscience to-morrow in the market-place for invest- 
ment ; there will be conscience to-morrow night in 
the playhouse, and over the rattling dice, for invest- 
ment. God help young men to invest wisely. 

III. The young man has vast wealth of affections. 
God has not created us all brain, nor all conscience. 
We have hearts, and we commonly denominate the 
heart as the seat and throne of the affections. Love 
is a principle of our nature ; we were created to love. 
Each heart, until it has become drugged with the 
poison of death, and depraved by vicious associations, 
has a wealth of affection that cannot be repressed nor 
smothered. It must be invested somewhere, ex- 
pended on some object, virtuous or vicious, holy or 
unholy, heavenly or human. It was Absalom's love 



ON INVESTMENTS. 161 

of empire that made him rise up against his- father's 
throne, and trample on all the holy ties that bound 
him to his royal sire. It was Daniel's love of 
prayer that made him defy the den of hungry lions. 
It was Paul's love of souls that sent him on his 
embassy of mercy through all the Gentile world. 
Love brought Christ, our elder brother, from the 
skies, and induced him to die on the cross. There 
are different kinds of love : parental love, filial love, 
fraternal love. There is love of God and love of 
man. There is love of virtue and love of vice. 
Sometimes love to an object is like the rolling tor- 
rent ; it overs weeps and overmasters everything, and 
bears upon its impetuous tides everything good and 
everything bad. Sometimes it is like a gentle silver 
stream, that fertilizes everything it touches, and 
blesses all around. 

And love is wealth that seeks investment. It goes 
out after some object on which to fasten itself, and 
on which it can climb up to its native sky. As the 
ivy will cling to rough rocks and defy the winds, so 
love winds itself around some pillar, and refuses to 
unfasten its tendrils, or unwind its arms. If that 
wife did not love her husband, if that mother did not 
have a child to love, the affections of the heart would 



162 young man's fkiend. 

go after some other object. Thus it is sometimes 
that affections are rudely broken off from some loved 
object, and the tendrils go searching about for some- 
thing to which they affix themselves, and unlawfully 
wind themselves around some false-hearted, deceitful 
thing, that is unworthy of their embrace. The ivy, 
if broken down from the cathedral wall, will go 
groping for something against which to rear itself. 
It may seize some hollow trunk, some mouldering 
tomb, some ruined arch, some crumbling monument. 
It must have some object to run on, or die. 

And in young hearts how much love there is, that 
is just putting forth its tendrils ! What stores of 
affection to be invested somewhere ! God made it 
not to stay in the heart, but to go out in search of 
olive branches, to find something to which it could 
cling in sunshine and in storm. If it finds something 
worthy of it, well ; if not, it will cling to the 
unworthy. It must go ; it seeks investment some- 
where. " Hearts to sell" is seen all through life. 
Sometimes they are sold cheaply to the first buyer ; 
sometimes held at higher price, sometimes thrown 
away. "Hearts to sell!" The sound goes out; 
Satan and God, the church and good men, are there 
to purchase. 



ON INVESTMENTS. 163 

IV. The young man has a vast wealth of hope. 
Young ^men are distinguished for elasticity. They 
have not yet been cast down, trampled on, jostled 
about, deceived, and lost their faith in human nature, 
as many old men have. The experience of many 
men in this world is so hard, so stern and relentless, 
that they soon come to stoical indifference, and rank 
infidelity, as to all human virtue. They have trusted 
and been grossly deceived ; they have had faith and 
have been sadly disappointed. They sit now looking ^ 
upon human society as one vast cheat, on life as a 
great failure, and humanity as a painted hypocrite. 
But with young men it is not so. They have seen 
only the sunrise of life, with all its rich golden 
beauties. They have only heard the song of the 
morning birds, and inhaled the delightful fragrance 
of summer flowers. They do not think of the hot, 
arid noon, when the strongest faint ; nor of the even- 
ing that settles in, cold, cheerless, and dismal. They 
are hopeful of states and commonwealths that are 
clashing to ruin ; they are hopeful of business schemes 
and projects in regard to which the wisest men shake 
their heads, and from which the aged turn away as 
from chimeras and dreams ; they are hopeful of a 
great, grand future in this life, of which millions have 



164 young man's friend. 

dreamed and scores only realized ; they are hopeful 
of that long eternity on which they will enter, but 
which seems to them so far, so very far distant. 
Every young man has a vast wealth of hope to 
be invested somewhere. There is no young bosom 
which is not beating and brimful of enthusiasm for 
the future. Intangible as hopes seem, they are a 
possession and a treasure. Thugh Cowley speaks of 
hope as 

" Fortune's cheating lottery ! 



Where for one prize a hundred blanks there be," 

and Young styles it " the assassin of our joy." 
There is no man who has hope who is not rich, and 
who has not wealth to invest. These rich, soul- 
freighted hopes cherished by young men, are all to be 
laid out on something ; they are to take hold of some 
objects in the future ; they are to go forward into the 
darkness and the gloom in search of blessings. 
These hopes make the step strong and vigorous, the 
eye bright and flashing, the countenance sunny and 
elastic, the heart warm and beating. The world has 
no night nor storms where hope is, — such hopes as 
are fluttering in a hundred bosoms. 

Such then are the fortunes young men have to in- 






ON INVESTMENTS. 165 

vest; — wealth of intellect, wealth of conscience, 
wealth of affections, wealth of hope. And where 
can riches like these be invested ? In what market 
can a purchaser be found ? Where are stocks and 
bonds and deeds worthy of being bought at such 
price ? 

1. Does the accumulation of property furnish a 
fund for such investment ? Wot a few of our young 
men are putting all they have of brain and conscience, 
and heart and hope, into the one single idea of be- 
coming rich. Everything is bounded, limited, and 
circumscribed by one absorbing master-passion. But 
will the investment pay ? Astor and Girard turned 
everything into gold, and became immensely rich ; 
they secured fortunes which your most sanguine hopes 
do not paint, but was the speculation a good one ? 
Did they make the best use of that wonderful mind, 
that loving heart, that awful conscience, and those 
cheerful hopes? A man who bends everything to 
the acquisition of property is a fool ! I have the au- 
thority of Almighty God for that assertion. He 
heard a man say, "I have goods laid up for many 
years, I will pull down my barns and build greater," 
and he looked down upon him, and saw him investing 
everything in barns, and stores, and stocks, and said 



166 YOUNG man's friend. 

to him: " Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be 
required of thee." A man in Cincinnati came down 
to the door of death. His physician told him that a 
few hours would end his earthly career. Then he 
uttered a sad confession. " I have made the mistake 
of a lifetime ; I have laid up one hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars, and have not a cent in the other 
world." Poor man ! He had invested intellect, con- 
science, heart, and hope, in one hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars, and now was dying without one 
vestige of hope for the future. 

2. Can a man invest all in literary pursuits ? Can 
he give all to scholarship and the culture of the mind, 
and be profited? Poor Goethe tried that, and died, 
saying : " It is dark, let in more light." Lord Byron 
tried that, and at the end of his course said, " I think 
I have never known twelve really happy days in all 
my life." Young Keats tried that, and on his tomb- 
stone, just beneath the shadow of the pyramid of 
Caius Cestus, you read the inscription, — "Here 
lies one whose name was writ in water." The expan- 
sion of the mind, the improvement of the intellect, is 
really a noble pursuit, but it is not the noblest. A 
man who invests all in earthly science will die ignorant 
of the highest and noblest science of all. 



ON INVESTMENTS. 167 

3. Can all be invested with profit in military glory ? 
To-day thousands of young men having forsaken all, 
are dazzled with the hope of military fame. They 
have laid all they have on the altar of the god of 
war. If they succeed, will the investment pay? 
Ask Napoleon's mouldering bones, lying in state be- 
neath the dome of the Invalides. Ask Nelson, 
who, on the eve of his last battle said, " To-morrow 
I gain a peerage or Westminster Abbey." Ask any 
of those fiery marshals, who followed the career of 
Napoleon to the base of the pyramids, and to the 
gates of Moscow. Ask Ellsworth, Lyon, and Baker. 
Ask the fallen braves of the Chickahominy and the 
Rappahannock. 

4. Is it wise to invest all in pleasures ? Many are 
doing that. They give mind and heart, conscience 
and hope, to amusement. The theatre, that pit of cor- 
ruption, that school of immorality ; the ball-room, 
where consumption goes to pick out its victims and to 
which vice resorts to turn pure hearts and make them 
polluted ; the circus, where, of all the performers, the 
horse is the most noble and the clown most brutish ; 
and other places which have been planned by Satan to 
decoy young hearts and ruin fair hopes, are the places 
where they make their trades, and drive their bar- 



168 young man's friend. 

gains, — selling brain and heart, conscience and hope, 
for visionary, disgusting, degrading pleasures. But 
does it pay ? Is the pleasure-hunter getting anything 
for his immense outlay? No. The happiness he 
seeks is always eluding him. The visions of bliss 
only prove to be phantom revels. Every day he 
grows sicker of the world, and yet more in love with 
it, more enslaved by it, and dies, at length, a wasted 
body, an enervated mind, a corrupted heart, and a 
doomed souL 

In this life-transaction, a young man is laying out, 
not thousands of dollars, but himself, his manhood, 
his being, and his soul. He is investing his dearest 
hopes for time and eternity. Let him invest in gold, 
in literary, or military, or civic fame, or in the polluted 
pleasures of carnal life, and his loss is immense. No 
mathematics can compute it ; no accountant figure it 
up, no angel scribe record it. 

And here comes in the text, " Buy the truth, and 
sell it not." Ah, there is something in which a man 
can invest his dearest, most precious treasures ! 
Something which, if a man buys and pays all he has, 
he will not make a bad investment, nor be disappointed 
in the end. " Buy the truth, and sell it not." No 
matter at what price, or on what conditions. It must 



ON INVESTMENTS. 169 

be bought ! Some things we buy only when they are 
cheap. Truth is always cheap compared with any- 
thing we have to pay for it. Investments in that 
never can be unprofitable. By truth, the intellect is 
guided and controlled ; the conscience informed and 
rightly educated ; the heart stored with love, and the 
hopes fixed on worthy objects, on heavenly things. 
And what is truth? Christ said, while on earth, " I 
-am the truth." He is the embodiment of that in 
which every human being should invest his dearest 
hopes and his most sacred treasures. He is the ob- 
ject around which intellect should stretch its arms, 
on which the affections should all be placed, and in 
whom the hopes for time and eternity should all 
centre. Christ is the divine centre and glorious rep- 
resentative of enduring riches and everlasting glory. 
The word truth, as it stands in the text, means all that 
unites in him of hope and salvation. He is the em- 
bodiment of all truth that relates to man's higher, bet- 
ter nature, of all truth that relates to salvation from 
hell and rest in heaven. The text means all this, — 
buy Christ, and sell him not ; buy atoning blood, and 
sell it not ; buy a passport to heaven, and sell it not ; 
buy a mansion in glory, and sell it not; buy the 
favor of God, and sell it not. There are investments 
15 



170 young man's friend. 

in time and investments in eternity. This text means, 
invest in eternal treasures. Wealth will do you no 
good after death ; fame .will not follow you beyond the 
grave. Pleasure will expire as you approach the last 
mysterious boundary of life. If you have no invest- 
ments on the other side of death, in that dim here- 
after about which sinners do not love to think, you 
w T ill die a fool. You will lay yourself in the grave, 
and angels will write on your tombstone the story of 
a wasted life. 

I am speaking to men who have invested all the 
wealth of intellect, conscience, affection, and hope in 
the things which lie this side of the grave, and have 
nothing for eternity. You have made a mistake, — 
you have sold yourself too cheap. What, give your 
immortal soul away for anything on earth ! Trade 
off yourself for anything, however much men prize it, 
that will not benefit you after death ! Barter away the 
precious conditions you have, wealth of conscience, 
heart, brain, and hope for this world ! What a blun- 
der ! You ought to have had heaven and everlast- 
ing glory for what you have thrown away ! Instead 
of that you have nothing but bonds, that run out 
when you die. What a blunder ! And you have 
made it. 



LECTURE VII. 

ON READING. 

Give attendance to reading. 1 Timothy, iv. 13. 

y^^HIS was an exhortation to a young preacher, 
j who was just entering the sacred ranks of 
^IS Christ's chosen heralds. Timothy was to 
be a minister, and Paul charges him, among other 
things, to give attention to reading, that his mind 
might be stored with pure and useful knowledge. It 
is an exhortation as pertinent and useful to all young 
men, whether they be preachers, merchants, mechan- 
ics, artists, or menial laborers. 

There was a time in the history of the world when 
men read but little ; when the facilities for reading 
were few; and when book information was very 
limited. For many years books were written out 
with the pen, on parchment, or the bark of trees, on 
bronze or marble, or slabs of slate. In the Vatican of 
Some is a leaden book of fourteen leaves, four inches 
long and three inches wide. The books which con- 



172 young man's friend. 

tained the laws and ordinances of the Greeks in the 
first century, were in part of wood. A Bible of palm- 
leaves, of more than five thousand pages, is preserved 
in the university of Gottingen. The work of making 
these books was excessive and costly. A class of 
scribes with busy pens produced them very slowly, 
and few indeed were they who could possess one. 
Aristotle paid three thousand dollars for a few books 
which he made at one purchase, and Plato paid one 
thousand for three small volumes. Where one person 
owned a book in those unliterary ages, thousands had 
never seen one. The little attic library of a school- 
boy now, is a much grander institution than could 
have been the library of the wisest sage of those 
periods. 

But the art of printing changed all this, and has 
deluged the world with books. John Faust, after 
some earlier inventions by others, brought out the 
printing-press, movable types, and the bound volume. 
His first book was but one page, but soon in all 
directions the invention was used to promote knowl- 
edge, and the result we have in books piled upon our 
shelves, from the little primer to the ponderous folio, 
from the scoffing "Age of Beason," to the soul- 
saving, God-given Bible. 






ON READING. 173 

We live in an age of reading. Books, news- 
papers, and all kinds of publications are within the 
reach of all. The poorest men can find facilities for 
reading to any extent desired by inclination or taste. 
No one is shut out from this grand privilege of this 
cultivated age. The taste may be refined or vicious, 
cultivated or depraved, and there are books, and 
pamphlets, and papers to gratify the desire. And 
the opportunity is eagerly seized by all. The reading 
matter of the American public is immense. The 
first newspaper ever published in England was as late 
as 1622, and the first in this country was in 1690, 
when a single issue appeared and was at once sup- 
pressed, and not until 1704 did the Boston News 
Letter commence regular weekly issues, and the 
Philadelphia Weekly Mercury followed it in 1719. 
And from such a small beginnino; in England and 
America has grown the stupendous newspaper estab- 
lishments that now flood the world with information. 
Since that little sheet in England, appeared two hun- 
dred years ago, the newspaper system has become a 
wonder and a miracle of enterprise. In 1860, there 
was isssued in London, of the Times, 16,000,000 
copies; of the Advertiser, 2,400,000; of the News, 
1,500,000; of the Herald, 1,160,000; of weekly 



174 young man's friend. 

papers, generally richly illustrated, 26,567,000 
copies. The Boston News Letter, when it appeared, 
was a half sheet of paper, twelve inches by eight, 
with two columns on each side. Now, there are two 
hundred and sixty daily journals in this country, some 
of them having enormous circulation. The circula- 
tion of the New York Herald alone has reached the 
enormous figure of over 90,000 copies daily. 

The issue of books has kept pace with the sale of 
newspapers. Of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom, four 
hundred thousand copies were sold in this country, 
and five hundred thousand in England. Volumes of 
history, books of travel, dissertations on law, ro- 
mances, medical works, and every kind of knowledge 
that can be printed and bound has been thrown out 
in book form. We have had from the same press, the 
Life of Judson and the Memoirs of P. T. Barnum ; 
Macaulay's Essays, and Doesticks' dissertations ; Pa- 
ley's Theology, and Dow's patent sermons ; the Holy 
Bible, and the Mysteries of Paris. There are circu- 
lating libraries, and libraries that don't circulate; 
volumes that ought to be read but are not, and vol- 
umes not fit to be read but which are eagerly perused ; 
books with blue and gold with dainty contents, and 
books in yellow covers with loathsome, disgusting 



ON READING. 175 

entrails, and books that smell of brimstone as if they 
had been printed in hell. 

Few things can be more important to a man than 
his reading, because reading makes or unmakes men. 
Yet few persons read with any system, or with any 
definite idea of the influence which their reading is to 
have upon them. It is of absolute importance that 
the reading of the young especially, should be rightly 
directed, and properly controlled ; that right books 
should be selected, and right habits of perusing them 
formed. 

Many a man has made himself famous by his read- 
ing ; his mind has been stored and his heart enlarged 
by coming to fountains of knowledge which have been 
bowled out by others. I might cite cases in which 
young men who have been shut out from the advan- 
tages of school education, have resorted to books, 
and stored their minds with useful information. Hugh 
Miller was such a man. His sailor father underrated 
education, and failed to give his son those advantages 
which his soul craved ; but Hugh had books, and he 
studied them to a noble purpose, and has left a name 
which any young mechanic might wear with more 
pride than the title of kings. Mr. Spurgeon, who 
preaches to the largest congregation that convenes to 



176 YOUNG man's friend. 

hear the gospel in the world, is the result of reading. 
Every sermon he preaches, shows that he has read 
with profit the works of the old English Theological 
writers. Some of our best men have read themselves 
up from the obscurity in which they were born to 
greatness, and honor, and usefulness ; not naturally 
great, they have used the researches and investigations 
of other men, have drank at fountains discovered by 
greater minds, have incorporated the experiences of 
the great and good into their own lives, and into their 
own sources of information. 

Other persons, on the other hand have poisoned 
mind and body with the vile exhalations of corrupt 
writers. Few persons have minds or mental strength 
enough to stand a contact with the vitiating, corrupting 
influence of the books they devour from week to week 
and year to year. If they were born pure as Adam 
was created, or with the intellect with which Bacon 
died, they would become corrupt, debauched, ener- 
vated, by the mental food provided for them. Sup- 
pose you should find a stalwart lad, who never had 
an ache or pain in his life, whose cheek is the picture 
of health, and whose arm is big with manly muscle. 
Suppose you should take such a lad into your family 
and feed him on sugar -plums and sweetmeats, or on 



ON BEADING. 177 

dainty bits of bread impregnated with arsenic ; break- 
ing up all the regular habits of life; denying him 
wholesome and substantial food, and feeding him on 
poisons, how long would his cheek retain its flush of 
health, his step its vigor, his arm its muscular strength ? 
Well, that is the process through which some minds 
are put ! That is the sort of food on which they are 
fed. Sugar-coated atheism ! Corrupt, poison fancies 
of French courtezans ! Little, silly, wishy-washy 
globules of sense dissolved in oceans of filthy, turbid, 
stagnant water ! What heart would not be poisoned ! 
What mind would not be vitiated ! They call it lit- 
erature ! As well might, you call blue pills and 
vapor-baths wholesome food. 

Let us consider, then, two questions, — what to 
read, and how to read? 

I. What to read. Those who have undertaken to 
correct the tendencies to bad reading have in some 
instances made mistakes. They have condemned in- 
discriminately one class of reading, and approved in- 
discriminately another class. The pulpit for a quar- 
ter of a century has been severe in its condemnation 
of fiction, and no line has been drawn between fiction 
that degrades and injures the mind, and fictions that 



178 YOUNG man's friend. 

improve and elevate the mind. There are several 
kinds of fictitious reading. Let me specify them. 

1. That which is inherently bad. There are many- 
works that have in them few, if any, redeeming 
features. They not only waste the time consumed 
in reading them, but absolutely corrupt every mind 
that comes in contact with them. Loathsome and 
disgusting, they consist of dressed-up vice, and gar- 
nished immorality. They are pestiferous in their in- 
fluence, damaging in their tendencies, and ruinous 
in their results. They ought never to lie upon a lady's 
table, or be seen in any civilized household. I refer 
to such works as those of Eugene Sue, Alexander 
Dumas, George Sand, and that whole school of French 
poisoners, and to a like sort that have sprung up in 
England and America, — the trash -you find piled up on 
the counters of periodical stores, and in Railroad depots, 
and which is hawked through the cars and sold in the 
street. Whoever reads such works gets a tainted 
heart and a debauched mind. It is like pitch, and 
you cannot come in contact with it, without defile- 
ment ; it is fire, and you cannot take it into your 
bosom without being burned. 

2. That which tends to badness. There are kinds 
of books that, though not positively bad, are unfit 



ON BEADING. 179 

for common perusal. Dickens, for instance, though 
admirable in his illustrations of human nature, and 
philanthropic as he doubtless is in his writings, and 
read as he may be with great interest, and profit, 
perhaps, by some, is not a fit author for all young 
people. He is always down among the dregs of life. 
His heroes and heroines are frequently and generally 
found in the workhouse or the prison. If he in- 
troduces a clergyman anywhere it is a sanctimonious 
hypocrite. If he has a philanthropist, it is general- 
ly a smiling cheat. The conceptions are debasing, 
the language low, and the teachings must be degrad- 
ing. His books are able, shrewd, keen, full of hu- 
man nature, but it is human nature in its lowest form. 
You take up one of the handsome illustrated works of 
Dickens, and you are much as if a man should invite 
you out to walk with him, and should lead you 
through the mud and filth of Five Points or St. 
Giles. Dickens takes you into the filth and mire of 
human nature. 

Bulwer goes to the other extreme. There is noth- 
ing of the human nature of the other, but there is a 
hand leading among the vices of other circles. He 
carries you to the temples of priests, and the palaces 
of kings, that you may see the evil of life. I see 



180 YOUNG man's friend. 

how some persons could read both classes of works 
with benefit, while I also see how they would only 
assist the masses toward ruin. You can point to 
nothing positively vicious in the works of this class, 
but the tendencies cannot be mistaken. The less 
young people read them, the better off they are. 

3. Those that are harmless, but useless. Mrs. Stowe 
wrote a thrilling story, and published it, and woke 
up one morning and found herself famous. She 
made a fortune by her effort, got introduced to the 
Duchess of Sutherland, and various noble people in 
England, and became an authoress of note and dis- 
tinction. Well, a thousand other women, who have 
none of Mrs. Stowe's ability to write, and a thousand 
men who must do something for a living, have each 
written a book, — a handsome duodecimo, with a 
great title, a bit of poetry at the head of each chap- 
ter, and a little love story running through the whole. 
From " Sister Agnes " to the " Lamplighter," it is 
much the same. The books will not harm anybody, 
and will do no good but to while away an idle hour, 
and kill a little time that drags heavily. There is 
nothing wrong about them, but much that is empty. 
Some of them are good stories, and if a man's mind 
is tired, and needs rest, the reading of such a book is 



ON READING. 181 

the nearest to nothing. But as food for the mind, a 
man might as well try to live on the empty wind. 

4. There are yet other classes of fictitious works that 
are valuable. These may be divided into two kinds, 
historical fictions, and moral and religious tales. His- 
torical romances fix in the mind events which in any 
other £uise would be forgotten, and sometimes truth is 
conveyed to the minds of the young by stories, that 
if presented in sermons would fail. The works of 
Walter Scott have an honorable and useful place in 
English literature, and though they will never be 
popular among the young people, they have a grand 
position among English writings and belles-lettres. 

Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom" was an effort to 
create a moral effect by romance ; T. S. Arthur has 
done the same in " Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, " and 
various other authors have preached the gospel of 
justice, temperance, humanity, and love under the 
thin guise of fiction. Such works will be read, and 
should be read. The mind is so constituted that it 
needs something of that kind, as well as plain, 
unvarnished fact, and stately, settled argument. 

But it is not fiction alone that must be watched. 
Much of the current literature of the day is poisoned 
with German rationalism, with an atheism that per- 
16 



182 YOUNG man's friend. 

vades it, and makes it destructive to the community 
into which it enters. Monthly magazines and pon- 
derous volumes are charged to the brim with an 
infidelity which corrupts and blasts wherever it goes. 
There was a time when atheism came to us in a garb 
too shocking to be received by decent men. " But 
now," as some one says, "infidelity has become 
pious, and goes to meeting ; but its teeth are just as 
sharp, and its malice just as deep, as when it was 
imported from France, where it was suckled. For- 
merly the wolf was wont to growl and snap in open 
daylight, but now he puts on sheep's clothing, and 
appears religious, uses honeyed words, and smiles 
blandly." There was a time when the pulpit was 
safe, but now atheism has entered the altar, and 
utters itself from the holy place. In one direction 
the Oxford divines cast forth upon us the destructive 
doctrines of the "Essays and Reviews;" and in 
another, Bishop Colenso lays before us his blasphemies 
on the Pentateuch. Our own writers are prolific, 
and our publishing houses place before our young 
people the glittering generalities, the misty transcen- 
dentalism, and the polished atheism of the loosest of 
writers. Much of our literature has been poisoned, 
and is as useless to put into the hands of the young, 



ON READING. 183 

as gunpowder into the hands of a child, and as dan- 
gerous as a bottle of poison, labelled " cordial," into 
the hands of an idiot. From the dainty sneers at 
religion in some of our ponderous quarterlies to the 
extravagant, absurd nonsense in some of our weekly 
papers or monthly magazines, the stream is discolored 
and polluted by the wickedness of unbelief. 

The rule, then, for a young person to adopt in rela- 
tion to his reading, is to peruse nothing which will 
not improve his mind or his heart. The question to 
be asked is, not " Will the reading of this book dome 
any harm ? " but < < Will it do me any good ? " I often 
hear it said of this book and that, " It will do me no 
harm to read it." Perhaps not, but is it wise, when 
we have so little time to read, to squander much on 
works that at best will do us no injury ? Suppose I 
have put into my hands an interesting but worthless 
volume, that is drugged with the poison of unbelief. 
I say, " I can read that book, which is an attempt, 
disguised it may be, to shake my faith in God and 
goodness, the Bible and the way of life, — I can read 
it without becoming infidel, or without having my 
affections for God blasted." Well, suppose I can, is 
it best for me to do so, when I can spend the same 
time in reading something that will strengthen my 



184 YOUNG man's friend. 

faith, and lead me up toward God, and prepare me 
for heaven ? That is the question to be applied to all 
our reading. Because a book will not make me 
immoral or atheistic, is no reason why I should wade 
through it. Can I not spend the time better? Can 
I not use to a nobler purpose the hours that would be 
consumed in reading a doubtful book ? 

The only good rule to be applied to reading is that 
which I have stated. Read nothing which will not 
improve the head or heart. The only exception I 
could make to this, is that a harmless, nonsensical, or 
light book, or story may sometimes be read as a re- 
lief from severe and harder reading. 

The whole tendency is to light reading, — very 
light. Our men read newspapers, — twenty a day, 
skip over the columns, a glance at war news, a look 
at the monetary article, and a run down the pages. 
That, that is the reading of men ! Our ladies read 
the " last new novel." Few venture into more solid 
matter. Light books come out just about often 
enough to keep the fairer sex employed, and that is 
about all the reading they do. Is it not a shame that 
this should be so ? Should n't a lady read history ? 
Should n't a lady read works on science ? Will our 
women admit that there is any inferiority of mind 



ON READING. 185 

which demands light literature ? Which supposes all 
the solid substantial works are for the men, and all the 
light, trashy, love romance is for the women? Is 
there anything in the female mind which unfits it to 
go back with Gibbon, and look at the Fall and De- 
cline of imperial Rome ; to explore with Hume or 
Lingard the musty archives of English history ; to 
revel with Milman among the glories of the Latin 
Christianity ? Or even to study with Neander the his- 
tory of the church. Is there any peculiarity of intel- 
lect which prevents ladies from moving in the higher 
walks of literature? I would not convert a lady 
into a Madame De Stael, or a Madame Roland, but 
better far the strong masculine qualities of those 
women, than the insipid, novel-reading class, that we 
so often find. 

Speaking of the stimulants offered to an excitable 

mind, Isaac Taylor exclaims : " Zest ! How may it 

! most effectually be dissipated, how irrecoverably lost ? 

Forgive me now this wrong, if, conscience-driven as 

j I am, I utter what must, I know, offend some who 

i read this paper. Genuine zest disappears wherever 

i fiction hold sway. I have no puritanic horror of 

I novels. I have listened to most of those that were 

the popular fictions of that by-gone time. I would 



186 young man's fkiend. 

say this only to the heads of families. Make your 
choice, — freely admit from the circulating library 
the three- volume novels of the season, and then be 
content to find that all residue of zest is gone as to 
history, or biography, or science, or anything else 
that is real and genuine, Christianity included. 
Novel-reading is an infatuation which masters souls 
as surely as dram-drinking does. Many are the mel- 
ancholy spectacles which one encounters in towns, — 
as, for instance, a woman, wasted, worn, in tatters, 
and near to starvation, — that is a sad sight. And 
so it is sad to meet the well-dressed lady of forty or 
fifty, hastening home with the three greasy-boarded 
volumes, which are all to be devoured between the 
noon of to-day and the dawn of to-morrow ! The 
alternative for the individual or the family is this : 
Novel-reading, with its consequent ennui and utter 
apathy, or else genuine feeling, employment with 
zest, as to whatever is real in life, in history, in 
science, in poetry, and iii general literature." 

I may be deemed severe, but I must say it, — the 
reading of our age tends to heartless frivolity. Our 
people should refuse to be made the victims of the 
wishy-washy floods that are pouring in such constant 
streams from half-addled brains ; they should protest 



ON READING. 187 

against the mental food furnished for them, and demand 
a recognition of their claims in higher, better walks 
of literature. 

II. But we must come to the other question — How 
to read. People who read good books do not always 
derive profit from them. There must be system in 
book-reading as well as in other things, in order to 
improvement. Many people read for the sake of 
reading. Whatever comes in their way they seize 
and devour, — history, science, romance, poetry, re- 
ligion. It passes through the mind as corn passes 
through the mill. It is ground up, but is not at all 
incorporated with the mill itself, — it runs down 
through. Others read, and what they learn is shuffled 
into the mind like a heap of old rubbish, and when 
you want anything you cannot find it. Sir Walter 
Scott has been instanced as a case in which desultory 
reading has led to greatness of mind. It is said 
that in his youth he read everything without system, 
devouring romance, history, poetry with an unregu- 
lated appetite. But Tulloch very well replies that : 
" An intellect of such a capacity as Scott's, was in a 
measure independent of common discipline. The 
strength of the craving itself may be truly said in 



188 young man's friend. 

this case to have more than ' compensated the absence 
of an outward rule. It fastened instinctively on that 
which was suited to its tastes. It converted every- 
thing it touched into the nourishment it required. 
Nothing was wasted, — all was digested and assim- 
ilated, and passed into the life-blood of his intellectual 
system.' But what was the appropriate aliment of 
such an intellect as Scott's, might prove the hurt and 
even the poison of a common mind." 

It is not the amount a man reads, but the way he 
reads, that makes him w T ise. Some go through 
books without knowing what is in them, and without 
deriving any benefit from them. " One such char- 
acter," says the fiery Bolingbroke, "I knew. He 
joined to more than athletic strength of body, a pro- 
digious memory and a prodigious industry. He had 
read almost constantly twelve or fourteen hours a day 
for twenty-five or thirty years, and had heaped 
together as much learning as could be crowded into 
one head. But this mass of learning was of little or 
no use to the owner. He was communicative 
enough, but his mind was distinct in nothing. His 
reason had not the mint of common mechanism. I 
never left him that I was not ready to say, ' God 
grant vou a decrease of learning.' I think it is the 



ON READING. 189 

quaint Thomas Fuller, who says that we should as soon 
judge a man valiant by the great army he has, as to 
judge a man wise by the great number of his books, 
or the quantity of his reading. The great Milton 
wisely says : — 

" Who reads 
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 
A spirit and judgment equal or superior, 
Uncertain and unsettled still remains, 
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself, 
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys 
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge, 
As children gather pebbles on the sand." 

A man should no more read without system, ob- 
ject, and aim, than a man should conduct his business 
without system and aim. The value of time is too 
great, and the usefulness of books too sacred to be tri- 
fled with ; and that young man is his own enemy who 
does not so read that his mind and heart shall be 
expanded, and his happiness and usefulness increased. 

A man who reads everything that comes, will 
spend time in a most unprofitable way. Jeremy 
Taylor says, k < Spend not your time in reading that 
which profits not ; for your labor and your health, 
your time and your studies are very valuable, and it 



190 young man's friend. 

is a thousand pities to see a diligent and hopeful person 
spend himself in getting cockle-shells and little peb- 
bles, in counting sands upon the shore, and making 
garlands of useless daisies. Study that which is 
profitable, and which will make you useful to churches 
and commonwealths." 

The rules then which I would lay down are these : 

1. Read only good books. These can be found by 
every young person, whatever his circumstances. 

2. Read systematically, so that, having read, you 
may avail yourself of what you have learned. 

3. Read thoroughly. A book that is worth read- 
ing is worth studying, and getting the whole of it. 
" Some books," says Lord Bacon, " may be read by 
deputy, but that is only the meaner sort ; distilled 
books are like distilled waters, — flashy things. 
Reading makes a full man, converse a ready man, 
and writing an exact man." 

But I must draw to a close. Why should a young 
man indulge in bad reading ? It corrupts the taste, 
unfits the person for the sober duties of life, injures 
the moral sensibilities, deadens the conscience, and is 
a shameful waste of intellect and strength. Why 
should young men seek a depraved literature when the 
healthy streams are flowing so freely ? The world is 



ON READING. 191 

full of good books and useful authors. At the head 
stands the Bible, God's book. No young man 
should be a stranger to that, the very bread of heaven, 
the water of life, the light to glory. And among 
uninspired books, how many there are ennobling in 
all their tendencies. Why should a young man pick 
his way through the filth of Don Juan while he 
has Milton, and Pollok, Young and Shakespeare, 
of a past age, and Willis, Bryant, Longfellow, in 
this ? Why should a young man take Bulwer when 
he can get Macaulay? James, when he can get 
Hugh Miller? Dumas and Sue, when he can get 
Bancroft and Prescott? 

A man should have some conscience about his 
reading, because reading will affect his conscience and 
his heart and his life. Bad reading is why so many 
wives are discontented with their homes ; why so 
many divorce cases are before our courts ; why so 
many have exaggerated, fanciful ideas of life ; why so 
many live and die disappointed. Bad reading leads 
to the theatre, makes young people acquainted with 
rogues and vices, saps the generosity of "nature, and 
prepares them to rush on in dissipation. Parents are 
mad when they fill the hands of their children w r ith 
the trash that floats from the press ; Christian book- 



192 Youisra man's friend. 

sellers are traitors to their Lord, when they expose 
it for sale on their counters ; and the young make a 
sad mistake when they drink it in like water. 

But I must not forget to ask you if in all your 
reading, young men, you have ever read your 
titles clear to mansions in the sky? Ah, after all, 
that is the most important kind of reading. You 
may read all the philosophies in the world and not 
be wise ; you may read the history of all time, and 
not be familiar with the greatest event of the ages ; 
you may read all the poetry that ever flowed from 
graceful pens, and not have seen the true melody of 
the soul. There is a style of reading, which no one 
knows but he who has been to the foot of the cross and 
felt the blood of Jesus flowing over his soul. There 
will come a time when all the knowledge of books 
which the greatest readers and the most sensible 
readers have acquired, will be worth nothing compared 
with the knowledge of Christ. Bunsen, the ripe 
scholar, and the distinguished statesman, said on his 
deathbed at the close of his long and brilliant career, 
" My richest experience is the having known Jesus 
Christ. All the rest is nothing. We live eternal life in 
proportion as we live in God." The greatest reading a 



ON BEADING. 193 

man can indulge in is, the reading of a title to heaven 
and eternal life. Can you read that? One of you 
can read Latin, another can read Greek, another can 
read French, and another can read German ? And 
can you read your title to heaven? Some of you 
can read the language of the stars, and the earth, and 
the ocean ! Can you read your title clear to heaven ? 

How often do we ask each other if we have read 
such and such a book. " Have you read ' Russell's 
Diary?' Have you read Mr. Fancy's or Mrs. 
Imagination's last novel ? " Let me ask you a ques- 
tion. Have you read your title-deed to a mansion in 
heaven ? Have you seen the passport which will admit 
you within the pearly gates of the New Jerusalem ? 
With all the learning which can be found in books, a 
man is not wise until he can read his title to a heav- 
enly home. However rich he maybe, he is poor un- 
til he has investments in heaven. A man's soul is 
but a prison-house of death until divine grace il- 
luminates it. 

Some one, I think it Oliver Wendell Holmes, gives 
us an illustration like this. " Did you never," he 
says, " in walking in the fields, come across a large 
flat stone which has lain, nobody knows how long, 
just where you found it, with the grass growing all 
17 



194 YOUNG man's friend. 

around its edges. You turn it over, and what an odd 
revelation ! Blades of grass, flattened down and 
colorless, matted together as if they had been bleached 
and ironed ; hideous crawling creatures, cunningly 
spread out and compressed ; black, glossy cohorts ; 
motionless slug-like creatures, more horrible in their 
pulpy stillness than the infernal wriggle of maturi- 
ty. € But no sooner is the stone turned, than all 
these creatures rush wildly about, butting each other, 
and ending in a general stampede for a home under- 
ground, out of the reach of sunlight. Next year you 
will find grass growing green and tall where that 
stone lay, the ground bird builds her nest where the 
beetle had his hole, the dandelion and buttercup are 
growing there, and the broad fans of insect angels 
open and shut over their golden disks, as the regath- 
ered waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through 
their glorified being. 

" The stone is ancient error. The grass is human 
nature borne down and bleached of all its color by 
it. The shapes which are found beneath are the 
crafty beings that thrive in darkness. He who turns 
the stone over, is whoever puts the staff of truth to 
the old lying incubus. Next year stands for coming 
time. Then shall nature which has lain bleached and 



ON READING. 195 

broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the 
sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their 
nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then 
shall beauty — Divinity taking new lines and colors, 
light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image 
of beatified spirit." 

So is depravity with all its bad reading, bad thinking, 
bad conversation, bad living, a stone on the soul of 
man ! Religion turns the stone. Regeneration is 
the new day. Then out from that heart where devils 
had their abodes come angels ; where were matted 
and bleached grasses and poisonous weeds, grow 
flowers and rise beautiful things. God's sunlight 
streams into it, and no one would recognize it as the 
heart on which the stone of depravity rested, under 
which reptiles and loathsome insects dug their holes. 

Can you read it, young men ? The title to heaven ? 
Has religion ever turned the huge stone of ancient sin ? 
Has atoning blood ever watered your hearts ? 



LECTUEE VIII. 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 



And Hazael said, Bi*t what I Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this 
great thing ? 2 Kings, viii. 13. 



W 



\/^/ RAPPED up in the very name of Hazael, 
there is an interesting little history, which 
has its sensible lessons and its impressive 
teachings. Hazael was a young man of great prom- 
ise, an officer on the staff of Ben-hadad, king of 
Syria. On one occasion, when the king was sick and 
nigh unto death, he sent this young man to the 
prophet Elisha, to inquire what would be the result 
of the divine visitation. With rich gifts in his hands, 
Hazael, the friend and favorite of the king, departed 
from the royal presence, to inquire of the man of God. 
The prophet was gifted with superior power of read- 
ing the hearts and understanding the secrets of men, 
and as he looked upon the frank, open, manly coun- 
tenance of Hazael, he sighed deeply, and wept aloud. 
The wonder of the young man was excited and he 
inquired why the prophet wept, Elisha told him 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 197 

why, — that he, the young servant of the king, who was 
now in the morning of life, would become a wicked 
man, do many unlawful acts, and recklessly violate 
the laws of God and man. "I know," said he, 
' ' the evil thou wilt do the children of Israel ; their 
strongholds wilt thou set on fire ; their young men 
"wilt thou slay with the sword, and their little ones 
wilt thou dash against the stones." The Syrian officer 
was indignant at such a charge, his self-pride rebelled 
against it. The crimson rushed to his cheeks and 
dyed his temples, as he asked with haughty disdain, 
and impulsive energy. ' ' But what ! Is thy servant a 
dog, that he should do this great thing ? " Elisha 
merely replied, as if unwilling to discuss the matter 
with a man so hasty and excited, " The Lord hath 
showed me that thou wilt be king over Syria." 

The messenger returned home the next day with 
thoughts of empire and sovereignty swelling in his 
heart. " After all," he said, " I should like to be 
king." And the unholy ambition to reign in Syria 
and sit on Ben-hadad's throne rankled in his bosom. 
He appeared before the king, his master. Elisha had 
sent word that the kino: might recover, ought to re- 
cover, would recover if left to himself, though he 
knew that Hazael would kill him, and reign in his 
stead. So Hazael said to the king, — " The prophet 



198 YOUNG man's friend. 

says thou slialt recover," and while Ben-hadad was 
rejoicing at such favorable tidings, Hazael wet a cloth 
in water and laid it over the face of the king and 
stifled him, seized his crown, ascended his throne, 
and reigned in his stead, thus within a few days ful- 
filling the predictions of the man of God. 

I introduce this narrative of Hazael as the founda- 
tion of a short discourse upon the instability and uncer- 
tainty of human character. I want to show you what a 
very poor thing human nature is to depend upon, with- 
out the grace of God. Hazael had been well educated, 
religiously trained ; he had all the light which could 
be poured upon the path of youth in those early 
days, and he shrank from the prediction of Elisha 
with indignant horror; yet, when an opportunity 
came for him to do the very things at which he shud- 
dered, he seized the opportunity and placed his name 
on record, as a striking confirmation of the fact that 
a man does not know what he will do until he is 
tempted. He cannot tell, when he is all hedged in 
with restrictions, guarded by the influences of home, 
and the customs of society, what sins he will commit, 
or what wrongs he will perpetrate when those re- 
straints are removed. 

Young men go out into life buoyant, cheerful, 
hopeful. They think their hearts are strong and their 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 199 

feet secure from falling. They believe themselves to 
be their own best guides. They say, "What do 
ministers know about young men? They are shut 
up all the week among books ; they derive their ideas 
from the misty writings of dead and buried centuries, 
— they know nothing about the temptations of young 
men." But that is a grave mistake. We know, 
young men, the trials to which you are exposed, and 
we know better than you do where the weak places 
in your hearts are. 

In discussing the theme announced, — " Human 
nature, its weakness and insufficiency," — I wish in 
a very plain way to talk with the young. I have no 
time to deal in flames of fancy, and figures of rhet- 
oric. I would save some young man who is just 
entering the outer circles of sin and folly. I begin 
with the remark — 

I. That persons setting out in any enterprise, do 
not design to make a failure or come to a bad end. A 
man goes to sea, and as he sails down the harbor 
dismisses his pilot and flings out his canvas to the 
gale, confident in his own success. He well knows 
that thousands have been cast away on the treach- 
erous deep ; that the coral caves far down beneath 



200 YOUNG man's fkiend. 

contain many a skeleton form ; that the pavements of 
the ocean are whitening with human bones ; that the 
green seaweed that clings to his cable or heaves with 
his anchor, has been the winding-sheet of many a 
gallant sailor, yet he has not the most remote idea 
that he will ever be wrecked and lost. Others have 
been, he knows ; he may be, he is aware ; but he has 
no fears of such a result. A prosperous voyage, a 
fine freight, a safe return loom up before him, and he 
sails out as confidently as if the ocean had never 
engulfed a human form, as if the monsters of the 
deep had never devoured a human victim, or made a 
banquet on human flesh, and as if no wreck had ever 
gone down to settle and rot in the unknown regions 
below. 

A man starts on a journey ; a thousand miles of 
railroad are before him. He will cross drawbridges, 
rush through tunnels dark, and swiftly dash along 
the banks of rivers, over yawning chasms, and howl 
and scream beneath overhanging precipices. He 
knows that on the very railway over which he travels, 
two trains but yesterday met in deadly embrace, the 
cars broken to pieces, the bodies of the passengers 
mangled to fragments, and on the roadside, now 
green and decked with flowers, were arranged dead 



ON HTOIAN NATURE. 201 

bodies waiting for wife and child to come and recog- 
nize them. Yet he does not believe that he will 
meet with any accident. The train he is in will not 
meet the lightning locomotive of another train. He 
can sit on his cushioned seat in the gorgeous car and 
read the most thrilling tale of catastrophe, and not 
dream that he may be the victim of a similar disaster. 
A young man enlists in the army, puts on the uni- 
form, decorates himself w T ith the much coveted shoul- 
der-straps, and takes his commission. He goes out 
with scarcely a thought of personal danger. He 
knows that in every war thousands of men have fallen 
in battle or been cut downJby disease ; he cannot walk 
the street without seeing some armless or legless hero 
limping along in his glory. He sees in every church 
he enters the sable-clad wife of the fallen warrior, 
seeking in the sanctuary, with her weeping children 
about her, for some solace in her dark hour. But 
he does not dream of a grave beneath the soil, 
nor does he picture himself in the future living on 
with a mutilated body. No ! glory points before 
him a sharp, short, victorious engagement ; promo- 
tion to the captaincy, then a colonel's commission, 
then he is a brigadier, or perhaps even a major-gen- 
eral, and then he comes home crowned with laurels, 



202 young man's friend. 

not with scars, and is received as the hero of some 
battle which shall save the country, and give immor- 
tality to his name. 

It is something so with human life. Go tell that 
young man who is just beginning to sip his wine, that 
he will be a drunkard ; that in some fatal hour he will 
fix upon his soul the dreadful habit of intemperance ; 
that the appetite will grow upon him, until he shall 
be a confirmed, reeling sot, a disgrace to his family, 
a pest to society, a source of sorrow to himself, and 
a foul blot on human nature ! Will he believe you ? 
Gan you convince him, that it will ever be so? 0, 
no ! " Is thy servant a dog," he asks with virtuous 
indignation, " that he should come to an end like 
that?" 

Tell that young man now entering business with 
such bright prospects and such high hopes, that he 
will some day be driven into straits, become a forger, 
be convicted of the crime, sentenced to prison, shut 
up in a cold dungeon, and perhaps die there, far from 
wife and child and friends ! Will he believe it even 
possible that he should come to such an end? O, no ! 
The very question you ask seems an insult to him, 
and he spurns you away with the question ' i Am I a 
dog to demean myself like this ? " 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 203 

Tell that young woman, the joy of her mother, 
the pride of her father, the charm and ornament of 
the society in which she moves, that she will become 
an outcast, and be left at length in sorrow and 
abandonment to say — 

" Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell — 
Fell like a snow-flake from heaven to hell ; 
Fell to be, trampled as the filth of the street, 
Fell to be scoffed at, be spit on, and beat; 
Pleading, cursing, desiring to die, 
Selling my soul to whoever would buy, 
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread, 
Hating the living, and fearing the dead." 

"Would she believe it ? Could she look down into 
the terrible degradation and feel that she would ever 
be there? O, no ! " Am I a dog, a beast, a reptile, 
thus to sink? " she would ask. The very accusation 
would be a crime in the eyes of that innocent person, 
— an insult to her womanhood. 

Tell that young Christian who has just been bap- 
tized, whose heart is full of love to God, whose soul 
is alive to all the beauties and glories of religion, that 
in some evil hour he will desert Christ, turn his back 
on his brethren, break his covenant with the church, 
neglect prayer, the communion of saints, and the 



204 young man's friend. 

duties of religion, and will he believe you? O, no ! 
4 ' Am I a dog ? " he would say, < ' Am I a wretch, un- 
fit for earth, unworthy of heaven, that I should thus 
injure my best Friend, and trample on the blood that 
bought me ? " 

And yet, mark you, the young man has become a 
sot, and died in all the horrors of delirium tremens! 
The merchant, who supposed himself above the tricks 
and arts of trade, whose word was accounted as good 
as his bond, has committed forgery, and by a single 
sweep of his pen made himself an outlaw. The 
young woman, whose cheek would have crimsoned at 
the least indelicate allusion, and whose bosom was a 
mirror of purity, has deserted father and mother, and 
given herself up to a life of vileness and infamy. 
The young Christian, who thought he would never 
fall, who swore that he would go with Christ to prison 
or to death, has fallen and become a sad apostate. 
The terrible fact stares you in the face, — they have 
fallen, though they never expected it. When the 
pulpit gave its friendly warning, and the press uttered 
its kind remonstrance, each had a ready reply, — 
" Am I a dog, to do this wicked thing ? " The bare 
suggestion seemed an insult at which they felt indig- 
nant. But there they are, — the drunkard in the 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 205 

gutter, the forger in prison, the harlot in her crimes, 
the apostate reviling the church he once loved, and 
the Saviour who redeemed him. There they are, 
though each one asked, — "Is thy servant a dog, 
that he should do this ? " 

II. There is no security in human nature against 
the influences of temjitation. There is much said in 
our times about the dignity of human nature. It is 
the great mission of one class of religionists to wor- 
ship the "deity in man," and exalt the creature at 
the expense of the Creator. But who ever found deity 
in man until God put it there, in the pangs and ago- 
nies of the new birth ? As well might paradise-lost 
have been searched for God, as the soul of man be 
searched for deity. God is not there. Human 
nature is a temple in ruins ; a ship stranded ; a star 
fallen. Every exhibition we have of mere human 
nature shows its imperfections. Whatever it might 
have been when pure and sinless, it is now a pile of 
ruins, — a disordered intellect, a seared conscience, 
a perverted will, blinded affections, and downward 
impulses. This is all; and yet men tell us we can 
trust it when the great avalanche of temptation comes ; 
that a deity dwells in its roofless halls ; that it has 
18 



206 YOUNG man's friend. 

the power of deity to cast back the foes that come 
against it. So Hazael thought ; so multitudes of 
others think, and are following out the blind impulses 
of their own wills, to end in death. 

Now this human nature, ruined by sin, is exposed 
to fearful temptations, which appeal to all its peculiar 
phases and conditions. These temptations are often 
terribly strong, and it is no wonder men yield to 
them. When presented to the angels in heaven, a 
third part of them fell from their shining seats, 
seduced from their allegiance to God; bonfires of 
anarchy were kindled in the streets of paradise, and 
confusion ran through heaven. When Adam and 
Eve were tempted they did not resist, but yielding, 
lost heaven, and involved us all in sin. Temptation 
presented to human nature, even in its best forms, is 
often overwhelming in its influence, and sometimes 
on its impetuous swell the evil and good are swept 
away. 

Why, just consider the illustrations of this sad 
fact. Going back to the early days, we find the 
patriarch Jacob grossly deceiving his poor old sight- 
less dying sire, that he might secure a birthright 
which legally belonged to his brother Esau. We 
find Abraham and Isaac both involved in sins, which, 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 207 

with the light we have, shock our whole nature. 
Lot, so good a man that God could not allow him to 
be destroyed with the doomed cities of the plain, had 
no sooner escaped than he committed the most un- 
natural crimes with his own daughters. 

" So Noah, when he anchored safe on 
The mountain-top, his lofty haven, 
And all the passengers he bore 
Were on the new world set ashore, — 
He made it next his chief design 
To plant and propagate a vine, 
Which since has overwhelmed and drowned 
Far greater numbers on dry ground, 
Of wretched mankind, one by one, 
Than all the flood before had done." 

Still farther down, we find Moses, the meekest of 
men, guilty of a pride which shut him out of the 
promised land ; David, whose sweet psalms have been 
sung by shepherds on the mountains, by pious cov- 
enanters in their exile, by gifted choirs in cathedral 
piles, which have subdued by their sweetness the 
savage and the sage, and made the worshippers of 

" Peor and Balaim 



Forsake their temples dim," 



208 young man's friend. 

was guilty of crimes which amaze and shock us, and 
bow us in pitying sorrow. Peter, who was such 
a bold defender of the faith, denied the Lord with 
oaths and curses ; Paul, who at Ephesus contended 
with wild beasts, who in Rome, in the wet and bloody 
Coliseum was made a mockery of senators and sages, 
and who, in the far-famed Areopagus, wrestled with 
all the gods of Greece, was often guilty of sin, and 
had in his soul a constant warfare between good and 
evil. 

And among all the greater and lesser lights which 
have shone in the horizon of goodness, I search for 
a sinless man in vain. Among the early fathers 
there is none; among the Christian martyrs, none. 
Payson and Whitefield owned the power of tempta- 
tion. Good men of every age have had moments 
when they could not resist. The history of our world 
is a constant record of temptations and sins. Go 
where you will, and you are not beyond the reach of 
the tempter. The monks of the Catholic Church, 
sighing like Fenelon and Thomas a Kempis for rest, 
have hid away from men in cloisters, where the little 
Gothic window has admitted only a " dim religious 
light," but they have not escaped temptation there ; 
the hermits that, like St. Sabbas, have hid in the caves 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 209 

and dens of the earth, have not been free from tempta- 
tion. It is everywhere, where man is, and where 
Satan can follow him, and there is nothing in 
human nature that can furnish a security against 
it. Some of those who sit here, who are saying, 
— " We can resist evil, we are in no danger," are 
secure only because they are all hedged in by friend- 
ships, and customs, and forms of life. When these 
cease to hold us, we are cast like others upon a shore- 
less sea. Many of the young men who hear me now 
are upright only because God has never allowed them 
to be tempted as were those fallen ones. No thanks 
to human nature ! No thanks to any principle of the 
human will, — to God alone the glory belongs. 

This leads me to say — 

III. That human nature needs the help of God to 
save it from the temptations of life. The power of 
sovereign grace alone is a sure defence against evil 
and sin. When that fills the heart, then temptation 
falls like rain on pyramids of stone. " Get thee 
behind me, Satan," was Christ's reply to the tempta- 
tions of the devil; and " Get thee behind me," has 
been the disciple's answer to the sins that have beset 
him. There was Joseph, to whom temptation 



210 young man's friend. 

came informs of wealth, beauty, fame, and pleasure, 
presented by a queenlike woman, who strove to throw 
her wiles around him. Grace prevailed ; the youth 
was saved. There was Moses. They offered him 
rank, pleasure, affluence and ease, in the court of 
Egypt, but grace prevailed, and Moses chose exile 
and proscription. There was David, that same David 
who planned the death of Uriah, that he might get 
Bath-sheba, repenting of his sin and standing upright 
in his integrity. There was Peter, who, when grace 
was out of his soul was a coward, a liar, and a blas- 
phemer, now thundering against the enemies of Christ 
with all the boldness of Pentecost. There was Paul, 
who, when he had no grace, imbrued his hands in holy 
blood ; with grace, became the chief of apostles, the 
very hero of the cross. There was John Newton, 
who before he had grace was a man thief and a pirate, 
but who became through grace a minister of Jesus. 
And who can tell how Whitefield and Wesley, Lu- 
ther and Calvin, Baldwin and Beecher, Edwards and 
Stoughton, Griffin and Judson wrestled against the 
fatal power of the tempter ? Who can tell how grace 
enabled them to beat back the foe when almost dis- 
couraged ? Grace is the shield in the terrific conflict 
with the world. Grace is the soul's lifeboat, on life's 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 211 

dark, deep, dangerous sea. It is not the divinity 
in man that saves, but the Divinity that is as far 
above man as the heavens are higher than the earth. 
The foundations of true happiness, of the nobler life, 
are not laid in your books of poetry, fiction, and 
novelty, but in the blessed Book of books. Neither 
Chesterfield nor Bacon can tell a young man how 
he can stand in the dark night of temptation. There 
are times when the power of evil will sweep away 
customs, love of life, education, conscience, every- 
thing but sovereign grace. 

I commenced my ministry on the banks of the 
Merrimac, in an enterprising manufacturing city. 
One night, the intelligence was communicated to the 
people, that the guard-gates were liable to be swept 
away, and the city overwhelmed. At midnight the 
alarm-bell had sounded and thousands congregated. 
Those who repaired to the river beheld a fearful 
scene. Huge masses of ice came tumbling down ; 
the excited torrent, crested with foam, went fiercely 
leaping around ; bridges were swept away ; houses 
were torn from their foundations . The locks in the river 
above gave way, the danger continued to increase, and 
to those who stood near the guard-locks the scene 
was intensely fearful. Had these frail barriers given 



212 YOUNG man's fkiend. 

way, the ruin would have been immense ; mills, 
stores, houses, and churches might have been swept 
away. But the foresight of a sagacious engineer had 
provided an extra gate, which for years had been 
closed up in its place. Men said it would never be 
wanted, and ridiculed the fears which at vast expense 
had provided it. But now that engineer was roused 
from his sleep ; the gate was hoisted to its place ; it 
closed down against the icebergs and mad waves, — 
the danger was over, the city was saved. 

The temptations of life are like that river, — ever 
flowing. The influences of home, practical counsel, 
conscience, and education, may answer as guard-gates 
when all is fair. But let the storm become violent, 
let the tempest rage, let the icebergs of vice come 
tumbling down, and the great guard-gate of divine 
grace must be hoisted to its place, or entire destruc- 
tion will ensue. 

Thus have I led your minds to a train of thought 
which is well calculated to show you that human 
nature is not reliable. Depend upon it, and it will 
prove a feeble staff, a broken reed. Ah ! young 
man, I know what you want ! I know what an angel 
would want if he should come down to this world to 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 213 

live here as we live ! You need the high, divine 
power of the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Some say we must not allow the young to come 
within the circle of temptation ; we must not allow 
them to see vice. All very well if it could be done, 
but the thing is impossible. You must send them 
out of the world to save them from temptation. " If 
you attempt to preserve a man from danger," says 
Sidney Smith, "by keeping him out of it, you 
render him quite unfit for any style of life in which 
he may be placed." Temptation is a necessary dis- 
cipline. It is needed to develop the power of resist- 
ance. It is not necessary^that a man should be igno- 
rant of vice in order to be free from it. " The heart 
of a wise man," says Confucius, " should resemble a 
mirror, which reflects every object, without being 
sullied by any." It is not necessary that a mariner 
at sea should escape storms and tempests ; he should 
only be prepared for them. Nor need a young man 
escape the temptations of the world ; he should only 
be prepared for them ; let them come, and let them 
be resisted by grace, and he will be a nobler, stronger 
man for the trial. You do not think the scars and 
wounds of the wounded hero, as he comes home from 
the field of victory, dishonorable. There are some 



214 young man's friend. 

men who have been through mental struggles and 
severe temptations such as you know nothing of. 
You look upon the marks of that tremendous moral 
conflict with disdain ; you have never had such trials. 
It would be well for you to remember that 

" The workings of their brain 

And of their heart thou canst not see ! 
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, 
In God's pure light may only be ' 
A scar, brought from some well- won field 
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield." 

And remember, too, that every man has a weak 
place in his character, some unguarded gate to his 
heart. Strong men are not all strong. You who 
feel so confident, only need to be touched in the 
tender place. The temptation which assailed your 
friend, and beneath which he fell, you would not feel, 
but one against which he could easily stand would 
bow you in the dust. 

Everything teaches us the necessity of grace ! 
The power of temptation and the weakness of human 
nature alike demand religion in the soul, — religion, 
the new power of God, against sin and falling^ 

Young men, will you receive it? Don't say as 



ON HUMAN NATURE. 215 

Hazael did, — " I am strong enough without grace." 
Don't depend as he did on human nature. There is 
nothing to depend on but God. Some of you feel 
your need of religion. Seek it, as men seek hid 
treasures. Stop not, halt not, hesitate not. 

" There is a fable I once did read, 
Of a bad angel that was some way good, 
And therefore on the verge of heaven he stood, 
Looking each way, and no way could proceed." 

Ah ! how like that angel are some of you ; uncon- 
verted, but sighing for Christ ; standing just on the 
verge of the kingdom of heaven, looking both ways, 
but entering not. How many such there are. 



1 



LECTURE IX. 

A HUMAN MODEL. 

Behold the man. John, xix. 5. 

EVER let the memory of a good man perish. 
It is worth too much to the living age to be 
^f]J^ allowed to go down with him to the grave ! 
We often lament the arts that are lost. The annals 
of science teach us that the ancients had many arts of 
which we know nothing. We ask with wonder by 
what machinery the pyramids were built, by what 
process such huge shafts were reared as now stand 
here and there in the waste of ruin that has crumbled 
to pieces the ancient world. We inquire in vain for 
combinations of color such as appear fresh and beau- 
tiful as yesterday after a burial of eighteen hundred 
years at Pompeii. Many of the boasted inventions 
and discoveries of this age are but reproductions of 
arts that were lost generations ago. 

But it is a less calamity to lose arts, than the mem- 
ory of large-hearted, great-souled men. The arts 



A HUMAN MODEL. 217 

can be reproduced, but great men are sent by God. 
The world is full of inventions, and patent rights, and 
wonderful discoveries, but only here and there is a 
great man towering above the heads of the common 
million, as a mountain sometimes towers above its 
fellows of the rocky range. A war sweeps over a 
continent, and leaves standing high, one or two, only 
one or two^ great men. A century passes away, and 
as you look back over it how few great men are seen 
rising above its level plain of thought and action. 
The history of American civilization stretches back to 
1620, — to Plymouth Rock, and has developed char- 
acter faster than any nation ever did before, hwt few 
have been the great men ! " No American Homer, 
Virgil, Dante, Copernicus, Shakespeare, Bacon, 
Milton, Newton," says Edward Everett, " has 
risen on the world. These mighty geniuses seem to 
be exceptions in the history of the human mind. 
Favorable circumstances do not produce them, nor 
does the absence of favorable circumstances prevent 
their appearance. Homer rose in the dawn of Gre- 
cian culture ; Virgil flourished in the court of Augus- 
tus ; Dante ushered in the birth of modern European 
literature ; Copernicus was reared in a Polish cloister ; 
Shakespeare was trained in the greenroom of a 
19 



218 YOUNG man's friend. 

theatre ; Milton was formed while the elements of 
English thought and life were fermenting toward a 
great political and moral revolution ; Newton, under 
the profligacy of the Eestoration. Ages may elapse 
before any country will produce a mind like these ; as 
two centuries have passed since the last-mentioned 
of them was born." 

Hence, when one of the marked characters pass 
away, his memory, not Ms body, should be embalmed, 
and his life should be incorporated into the lives of 
the men who have seen him in his towering excel- 
lence. If there be but one Washington in the history 
of America, that one should ever be kept before the 
American mind. If Scotland has but one John 
Knox, England but one Wilberforce, and Germany 
but one Luther, these men should not be allowed to 
die. 

There is an indisputable fact, — "The dead 
speak ! " The covering up of a man's body in the 
ground, the suspension of his physical functions, does 
not consummate his work nor finish his existence, nor 
terminate his influence. A good man always lives 
after he is dead. The tombs of our heroes, statesmen, 
martyrs, arc all eloquent. Their occupants are dead, 
but they speak ! Few heard them while they lived ; 



A HUMAN MODEL. 219 

now they speak to millions. The humble men and 
women who appear in the beautiful narratives of the 
New Testament, — the poor widow who put into the 
treasury all the living that she had ; the woman who 
broke the alabaster box and poured the ointment on 
the Saviour's sacred person; Lazarus, who lay at 
Dives's gate, full of sores ; Mary, who lingered longest 
at the cross and came soonest to the tomb, have all 
passed away ; no one can find a stone of the tene- 
ments in which they lived, but they speak to every 
language and to every clime. 

Paul is dead. His old pulpit on Mars' hill is ten- 
antless ; the Ephesian craftsmen are not disturbed by 
his presence. He has escaped perils by sea and 
perils by land. He is beyond the cold chill of the 
Mamertine prisons, the wild beasts of the amphi- 
theatre, and the headsman's axe. He is a crowned 
conqueror on high, but he is still to earth a preacher 
of the unknown God. His voice is heard in Europe 
over the graves of the martyrs ; it echoes over India, 
in its corruption and sin, and it penetrates the black 
night of Africa and makes Ethiopia resound with 
salvation. 

Mahomet is dead. He made his last pilgrimage 
to Mecca twelve hundred years ago ; his bones were 



220 YOUNG MAN ? S friend. 

sepulchred in Medina twelve centuries since, but he 
still speaks, and millions of human beings obey his 
voice as if it was the voice of God ; a whole empire, 
from its capital on the banks of the Bosphorus to the 
most distant harem among the sands of Egypt, or in 
the desert of Arabia, is thrilled by the utterances of 
the long-buried prophet. 

Luther is dead ! Three hundred years ago Me- 
lancthon pronounced over his motionless body an 
eloquent eulogy, and, to the universal grief of all 
Germany, that iron frame was interred at Wirtem- 
burg. But the soul of Luther goes marching on in 
the majestic strides of the Reformation ; his voice is 
heard upon the banks of the Tiber, and he is dis- 
puting with the supreme pontiff for supremacy in 
Rome herself. 

Calvin is dead ! Long has his body been moul- 
dering in that beautiful Genevan cemetery without a 
monument or an epitaph, but the church of Rome 
has not yet ceased to tremble at his great name, and 
his dead hand to-day holds in a vicelike grasp the 
intellect, the conscience, and the heart of the Chris- 
tian world. 

Roger Williams is dead ! A tardy gratitude is 
about erecting a monument over the spot where, two 



A HUMAN MODEL. 221 

hundred years ago, he was laid to rest ; but he speaks, 
though dead, in every effort of humanity to emanci- 
pate itself from the chains of spiritual oppression, in 
every struggle of the world for soul-liberty, of which 
he was the first and noblest expounder. 

George Washington is dead ! Within the hal- 
lowed shades of Mount Vernon, undisturbed by the 
anarchy and treason that came howling around his 
tomb, his bones calmly repose ; but though dead, he 
speaks to his countrymen in the hour of peril, and 
his spirit, like a guardian angel, hovers over the coun- 
try to whose capital he gave an honored name, and to 
whose history he imparted the sublimity of his majes- 
tic life. 

And so it is of all the good and great. They have 
an immortality on earth that death cannot touch, nor 
time disturb ! We speak of men as being no more. 
Is Isaac Watts no more? No, he lives in every verse 
of his beautiful hymns that are sung in every lan- 
guage under heaven. Is William Wilberforce no 
more ? No, he lives in every decree of emancipation, 
in every law against the slave-trade, in every broken 
fetter, and in every liberated slave. Is John Wesley 
no more? No, he remains in every Methodist 
church, in every class-meeting, in every spoke of the 



222 YOUNG man's friend. 

great iron wheel of Methodism. Is John Milton no 
more? No, he haunts the earth in the heaven- 
reaching wails of Paradise Lost. Is Robert Raikes 
no more? No, he lives in every Sunday school, in 
every little child's paper, in every school library, and 
in every Sunday teaching institution. These men 
will always be. The body is in the tomb, but the 
influence, in an angel guise, walks the earth, scatter- 
ing blessings on mankind. 

But not the Luthers and Calvins, Wesley s and 
"Washingtons, Newtons and Herschels only, give form 
and direction to coming ages, but, " as the smallest 
particle of matter upon this globe of ours," says one, 
4 * exerts an influence upon the largest and most dis- 
tant orb rolling in the immensity of space, so the 
most obscure individual, unknown to fortune or to 
fame, living in the remotest part, must have assisted 
in swelling the tide of influence which is now pouring 
its resistless torrents over the intellectual and moral 
estates of mankind." 

Thoughts like these prepare the way for me to 
speak of one of the truest patriots, one of the sound- 
est statesmen, one of the humblest Christians, and one 
of the noblest men our country has ever produced, — 
George Nixon Briggs, a man identified not only with 



A HUMAN MODEL. 223 

the political history of his own State and this great 
nation, but with almost every great philanthropic and 
missionary movement of the last half century. 

I deem it wise, at this stage in this series of Lec- 
tures, to give you a specimen of noble character, — 
a model man, who illustrates many of the most 
excellent traits of character which we have been com- 
mending to the young. And when we began to 
inquire for such a character, several started up before 
us. We thought of Sir Fowell Buxton, whose 
life has been such a lesson of nobility to the young 
men of England, and of Amos Lawrence, who has 
justly been denominated the " Christian merchant" 
of America. But I have selected one who occupied 
more numerous and more prominent positions than 
either of these, and who combined many of the most 
essential elements of character. His was a round 
life, a complete manhood, part balancing part, and 
producing universal symmetry. By the presentation 
of such a character, I hope to produce an impression 
which I could not produce by any discussion of ab- 
stract theories. By the presentation of a human 
model I shall better prepare you to contemplate the 
divine model, — Jesus Christ, our Lord. 

Mr. Briggs was born in the town of Adams, a vil- 
lage among the Berkshire mountains, Massachusetts, 



224 YOUNG man's friend. 

on the 12th of April 1796, and died on the 12th of Sep- 
tember, 1861, in the 65th year of his age. His father 
was a poor, hard-working blacksmith, and George, at 
thirteen, was put out as an apprentice to a hatter, 
where he did the errands and performed the drudgery. 
Feeling a dislike to his trade he went to a village acad- 
emy and obtained one year's education, and then en- 
tered a law office in his native town, and was admit- 
ted at the bar in 1818, at the age of twenty-two. 
His education was very superficial and his legal 
knowledge imperfect. But his untiring industry 
made him superior to all obstacles, and he obtained 
a respectable practice, and established a most enviable 
character, throughout his section of country. In 1830 
he was elected to Congress, and at the early age of 
thirty-four took his seat among the great men of the 
land. He continued in Congress twelve years, having 
six times received the suffrages of his fellow-citizens. 
In Congress, he was one of the few men who drank 
no liquors, smoked no cigars, used tobacco in no 
form, and kept aloof from the carousals for which 
the city of Washington has been famous during the 
sessions of Congress. On no public occasion would 
he taste wine, the mocker ; and many a young man 
has his consistent example, and his clear, convincing 
argument, turned from the paths of ruin. 



A HUMAN MODEL. 225 

Those who knew him may remember that he never 
wore any collar, but simply a black stock or cravat, 
about his neck. The reason for this, with how much 
truth I cannot tell, is said to be as follows : A young 
friend of his became strongly attached to .intoxicating 
drinks and was fast going down to a drunkard's 
grave. This model man endeavored to reform him, 
used all the arguments of which he was master, and 
pushed the young man so hard that he retorted. 
Looking the worthy man full in the face, he said, 
" Mr. Briggs, you ask me to give up a practice that 
I consider harmless ; what would you do to secure 
my compliance with your wishes?" "Anything 
that is right," said the noble man. " Well," said 
the young fellow, " Take off that collar from your 
neck and I will promise, before God, not to drink as 
long as you refrain from wearing it." Briggs un- 
fastened the collar from his neck, cast it from him, 
and said, " Give me your hand as a pledge." The 
young man gave it. The one never drank again, the 
other never was seen with the useless ornament about 
his neck. 

Mr. Briggs was chosen Governor of Massachusetts 
in 1843, and remained in office, being re-elected every 
year until 1851. In that office he exhibited the most 



226 YOUNG man's friend. 

sterling qualities under some of the most trying cir- 
cumstances in which any man could be placed. On 
retiring from the chair, he was made Judge of the 
Court of Common Pleas, in which office he continued 
until a reconstruction of the courts induced him to 
return to the profession of the law in his native 
county. 

He became President of the Missionary Union in 
1847, and held the office until the time of his death 
in 1861. Those of you who have been accustomed 
to attend those meetings, know with what power his 
opening addresses have been made, and with what 
grace and dignity he presided, and what interest his 
presence gave to all the meetings of the Union. 

He was indeed a noble man, — a Christian without 
cant and affectation ; a politician without guile ; a 
patriot without selfishness, a citizen without dishonor ! 
Diogenes, the old civic philospher, walked through 
the market-place of Athens, at noonday,with alighted 
lamp in his hand, in search of a man. If he had 
seen George N. Briggs, he would have exclaimed, 
' ' I have found him ! " He was in every respect a 
man ! 

" Shame knew him not ; he dreaded no disgrace ; 
Truth, simple truth, was written in his face ; 



A HUMAN MODEL. 227 

Yet, while the serious thought his soul approved, 
Cheerful he seemed, and gentleness he loved. 
To bliss domestic, he, his heart resigned, 
And with the firmest had the fondest mind. 
Were others joyful, he looked smiling on, 
And gave allowance when he neefled none. 
Good he refused with future ill to buy, 
Nor knew a joy that caused Reflection's sigh." 

The manner of his death was peculiarly afflictive. 
He was told one day that a carriage had been over- 
turned near his residence, and that two ladies wanted 
assistance. He went to a closet to take down his 
coat. In this closet his son, afterward Major-General 
Briggs of the army, had put a loaded fowling-piece, 
and as his father was taking down his coat, the piece 
was discharged, and the contents sent into the face 
of the venerable man. His countenance was horri- 
bly mutilated, the lower jaw being shot away. He 
survived a few days, and died, and the tidings went 
wailing over the Commonwealth, that one of its 
noblest citizens had gone to his rest. 

There are various phases of his character I might 
take up and present for your consideration. I might 
point to his industry, raising him from a hatter's shop 
to the halls of congress, and the chief magistracy of 
a sovereign commonwealth. 



228 YOUNG man's friend. 

I might refer to his Integrity, that was conspicuous 
amid all the temptation of his Congressional career, 
and which was so well known that no man dared 
approach him with a bribe. 

I might refer to his Patriotism, which was ever con- 
spicuous in peace and in war, and which was of that 
high order which does not depend on an office to make 
it thorough and reliable. 

I might speak of his Temperance principles, which he 
maintained for forty years, alike in Washington as in 
Pittsfield, and which were never sacrificed to any 
formality or custom, which were never taken down as 
a vessel dips her flags when a distinguished stranger 
appears, but which were a part of his simple, con- 
sistent life. 

I might refer to his Missionary Zeal and his Chris- 
tian love, which led him always to fraternize with 
Christians, and identify himself with the church to 
which he was attached. 

But I cannot better subserve the purpose of this series 
of Lectures to the young, than by presenting him as 
an illustration of the power of Religion to sweeten and 
bless a man's whole public life, and to calm and tran- 
quillize him in death. Governor Briggs is an illus- 
tration of godliness in high life; piety, practical 
religion, in public positions. 



A HUMAN MODEL. 229 

Most men think it impossible to be successful in 
business, or in public positions, and maintain a high 
character for piety ! A few men only have been con- 
spicuous for religion under the pressure of business, 
and the cares of state, and on the field of battle. 
George N. Briggs was one of them. In Congress, he 
was as eminent for piety as in a Pittsfield prayer- 
meeting. He took his religion with him when he 
went to Boston ; he carried it with him to Washing- 
ton. The humble woman with whom he boarded at 
the capital, used to say she had many professors of 
; religion under her roof, but never had she known one 
to maintain so consistent a walk as he. When he 
was Governor of Massachusetts, family worship was 
instituted at the quiet hotel at which he boarded, and 
he often, while pressed with cares of state, led the 
devotions. In the Massachusetts Legislature, the 
chaplain of the House of Representatives, after offer- 
ing prayer in that hall, goes into the Council Chamber 
to open the meeting of the Governor and Council with 
prayer. Often on these occasions the chaplain would 
be late, and at such times it is said that the governor, 
spreading his hands, would seek the heavenly grace 
upon the deliberations of the day. 

When abroad on official duty as judge or governor, 
20 



230 YOUNG man's friend. 

he would always be found in a place of worship 
of some denomination, at least half the day, and 
especially so if the church was poor and obscure. 
He was a Sabbath-school teacher ; prayed and talked 
in prayer-meeting, and in religion was just the simple, 
honest-hearted man that you would have expected 
him to be if he had been a hatter, or a carpenter, or a 
stone mason. I have heard him speak on many occa- 
sions of public interest, but never so eloquently as when 
he was pleading for Christ or his cause. I remember 
to have listened to one of his missionary addresses 
some fifteen years ago, in old Sansom Street church, 
Philadelphia, under the influence of which a thousand 
strong men melted to tears. " We have heard," he 
said, speaking of missionaries, "the story of their 
deprivations, labors, sorrows, chains, and imprison- 
ment. Many of them mourn over departed happiness ; 
many of them have fallen in the great work, and now 
sleep in heathen lands ; many of them have gone 
down to the great deep, where the seaweed is their 
winding-sheet, and the coral their only tombstone. 
One sleeps in St. Helena, until the sound of the last 
trumpet shall arouse her ; and when she comes up she 
will be attended by a retinue ten thousand times more 
pompous and splendid than ever surrounded the mad- 



A HUMAN MODEL. 231 

dened emperor who had his grave in that Island. His 
tomb was there, and after a few years, when it was 
opened, his military dress was wrapped around him, 
as when he was laid there, but the star upon his 
bosom, the emblem of his glory, the pride of his life, 
it was corroded and black, a true representation of 
human glory, the glory of a conqueror, an imperial 
murderer. But when the grave shall open, and that 
loved missionary sister shall come forth, there will be 
no corroded stones over her breast." 

And then he caught a view of the sacrifices made 
by Jesus, and his soul rose to a new" pinnacle of emo- 
tion, his eyes filled with tears, and his burning words 
fell thick and fast, as he pointed to the Son of Man, 
having not where to lay his head, scourged, buffeted, 
wounded, outraged, for our sake. Amid the sobs of 
that vast concourse, he followed the divine one from 
the Garden of Gethsemane to the cruel cross, and 
while they all stood at that centre of our holy faith, 
by a sweep of eloquence he changed the scene, 
brought them to the morning of the third day, 
pointed to angels, as they rolled back the stone from 
the door of the sepulchre, and bid them see the con- 
queror of death, as he came forth leading death and 
hell in captive chains. 



232 YOUNG man's friend. 

And thus it was — religion everywhere. He wore 
it as a royal robe wherever he went. It adorned him ; 
it honored him ; it crowned him. It made him a 
king, a priest, and a conquerer. It mingled as a 
sweet influence with all his public and private acts ; 
it gave majesty to the governor and dignity to the 
judge ; character to the citizen and glory to the man. 
It was the basis of his greatness. His intelligence, 
industry, integrity, and manhood were all founded on 
religion. 

And religion will ennoble and dignify any man. 
What increased confidence should we have in our 
public men, in the heads of departments, in the Gen- 
erals, if we knew them all to be Christians ! And 
what hope we should have of our young men if we 
knew they all loved the Saviour, and were interested 
in the salvation of the soul. What hope might the 
nation have in the piety of her children ! What hope 
might the world have if the young men of our times 
were on the Lord's side ! That is the kind of young 
men the earth needs to bless it. Those are the men 
the nation needs to make it permanent and abiding. 
Asks the oft-quoted lines — 

11 What constitutes a state? 
Not high raised battlements, or labored mounds, 



A HUMAN MODEL. 233 

Thick walls and moated gate j 
ISTor cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where laughing at the storm rich navies ride ; 

Nor starred and spangled courts, 
Where low-brained baseness wafts perfume to pride ! 

ISTo, men, high-minded men, 

Men who their duty know, 
And know their rights, and knowing dare maintain, — 

These constitute a state." 

The religious nature of Governor Briggs was most 
rigidly and signally illustrated in his last days. 
During his whole life he had an extreme aversion to 
death. He believed himself prepared to die, he did 
not fear what would come after it, but he dreaded 
dying, the physical struggle, and while in health he 
could not look forward to the last hour without the 
greatest dread. But when he came near the close 
of life all this was taken away. God gave him dying 
grace when he needed it, and his end is a beautiful 
illustration of the believer's victory over death and 
the grave. For a time after the accident occurred, 
he was insensible, and for a few days was wandering, 
but his mind came out clear into God's sunshine. 
" It is come," he said to his wife, a little before death, 
" Be still, and know that I am God." To his daugh- 



234 YOUNG man's friend. 

ter he said, < ' I thought that day I should be in eter- 
nity in a moment ; I think I was perfectly calm." 
When the singularity of the accident became the 
theme of his thoughts, he said to his son, " It is 
strange I should meet the fate of the battle-field at 
home ; it is all right." Referring to the dreadful 
night after the accident, when the wounds were being 
dressed and the operation performed, he said to his 
physician, " What a night was that for my family, 
doctor. God scourged me and them. But he has 
bound up our wounds ; how good he is ! " And 
throughout those days of sorrow ere he died, this 
was the only spirit he manifested. No murmuring, no 
complaining, but calm and holy submission to the 
will of a thrice holy God. 

The humility of the man shone like a rainbow over 
that dying bed. He was a truly great man, but his 
humility was like that of a little child. He was 
all his pastor said he was on the sorrowful funeral 
day : ' ' The poor have lost a benefactor ; the erring 
found in him a kind adviser. The young regarded 
him as a parent ! Who ever had a better neighbor ? 
What citizen was ever more beloved? As a chief 
magistrate of the Commonwealth who was his supe- 
rior? As a judge, who feared to commit a righteous 



A HUMAN MODEL. 235 

Cause to his hands ? He passed the ordeal of public 
life without dishonor. It might be chiseled on his 
monument, — * An honest statesman,' and no one 
would wish to erase the inscription." All this and 
more was true of him, and yet so great was his hu- 
mility that in dying he forgot it all. When some 
one told him of what he had done in the cause 
of Christ, he answered, " My life seems useless. I 
have done nothing, nothing, nothing." 

His faith in Christ was implicit, and Christ was 
his chief friend. While he lived, he was the object 
of just and universal regard ; when he died, the whole 
country stopped to shed a tear over his sepulchral 
couch ; and when he was buried, all business was 
suspended in the town, and all the houses draped in 
mourning, but no friend had he like Christ. As a 
beloved one stood by, his son said, "Father, you 
have no better friend than this." "Yes, yes, I 
have," he answered, " one better friend, Jesus, Jesus. 
God and Christ are my all." Constantly he longed for 
heaven, and when his hour came, he passed sweetly 
and quietly away, — away to a glorious home. 

Thus have I presented you a man who, though 
dead, speaks. His life and his death form a noble 
testimonial to the value of religion. Born in 1796 ; 



236 YOUNG man's friend. 

* 

born again 1808 ; apprenticed early in life to a hatter ; 
spending a year at a village academy ; reading law by 
the light of a log fire ; entering a law office as an 
errand-boy ; admitted to practice at the age of twen- 
ty-two ; rising step by step until he stands forth one 
of the noblest specimens of self-made men, — loved, 
honored, respected by all. 

" Statesman, yet friend to truth ; of soul sincere ; 
In action faithful, and in honor clear ! 
Who broke no promise, served no private end, 
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend ; 
Ennobled by himself, by all approved, 
Praised, wept, and honored by the State he loved." 

Though we may not worship the dead, we may 
love their memories and imitate their example. 
Though we may not pray to them, we may utter to 
them our apostrophe, as if they were yet with us. 
Oh, spirit of the mighty dead ! if thou dost hover 
round us and minister to us ; if thou knowest the 
fears that haunt us, and the temptations that assail 
us, inspire us with thy example and cheer us with 
thy voice ! Cast on us the mantle of wisdom and 
excellence thou dost need no longer. Bequeath 
to us the goodness that made thee so useful, and the 
heroism that rendered thee immortal ! Oh, spirit of 



A HUMAN MODEL. 237 

the ransomed, nothing can separate us from thee, — 
no creeds, no forms, no rites, no ceremonies, — nor 
death itself can divide us from the good of all ages. 
We are on the footstool, and thou before the throne ; 
we bearing the cross, thou wearing the crown; yet 
all one in Christ, our living Head ; all one in pious, 
self-denying labors, — thine past, ours present ; all one 
in goodness, as it travels on earth or is glorified in 
heaven ; all one in God, the great and only wise. 

The dead speak ! When we are dead we shall 
speak. Of what shall we speak? Shall we tell of 
a wasted life ? Of an insulted Saviour ? Of abused 
time? Of a ruined soulr? Or, shall we speak of 
Christ a friend, religion blessed, and heaven secured? 




LECTURE X. 

CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 

Looking unto Jesus. Hebrews, xii. 2. 

f EBY fitting it seems that a Course of Lectures 
to Young Men should close with the presenta- 
tion of the best model of character which can 
be found. A human model I have given. The 
lives of good men have been cited as illustrating 
the various virtues which bless and adorn human 
character and condition ; but none of them are perfect 
models. When an artist is about to paint a fine 
picture, or carve an exquisite statue, he secures a pat- 
tern as perfect as possible. If no model exists, he 
creates one, ,and from his own imagination brings out 
conceptions of faultless beauty, to guide his pencil or 
direct his chisel. As he progresses, he looks at his 
model, keeps in mind its outlines, and carefully 
studies its details. The rough block of marble, and 
the coarse, lifeless canvas soon bear traces of art 
and genius ; beauty appears ; regularity, order, and 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 239 

grace are seen in the almost living art that appears 
before you. 

In the formation of habit and character, a good 
model is of the utmost importance. Living is an art, 
and the art is not always understood by the beginner. 
Any man can get through the world ; there is no 
trouble about that. But to live, live nobly, live gen- 
erously, live usefully, very few know anything about. 
An artist who should commence a painting or a piece 
of statuary as most men commence life, would pro- 
duce only a monstrous failure. If he should begin 
to work with no plan before him, no definite idea of 
what he was to execute, he would arrive at no definite 
result. His unbridled fancy might paint a human 
head upon the shoulders of a beast ; or to a fish, give 
the crested head and forked tongue of the serpent ; 
and when his work was complete, he could not tell 
what he had done, or give a name to the creation of 
his art. 

And so, many start in life with no definite idea of 
what sort of a character they are to form. They 
leave to circumstances, to passion, to blind, headlong 
impulse, the great life-work, and depend on accident, 
or the chance turn of the wheel of fortune, to make 
them men or beasts, living creatures or dormant 



240 YOUNG man's friend. 

things : angels of goodness or reptiles of shame. 
They have no model of character, no art-sketch of 
life, and many put an angel's head over a devil's 
heart. In every failure made, we read the imperative 
necessity of a perfect model of character from which 
we may take a perfect imitation. And how few such 
characters there are ! There have been good men 
strewn all along the tide of time, and no better read- 
ing can be found than their biographies. Memoirs 
of good men and good women are inspiring and prof- 
itable. Who can tell how many noble young women 
have laid themselves on the altar of Christian mis- 
sions, by reading the sweet, touching story of Harriet 
Newell, or the startling, thrilling, romantic narrative 
of Ann H. Judson? Who can tell how many young 
Christians have ripened into efficient laborers for 
Christ, sowing beside all waters, by reading the plain, 
unvarnished tale of Harlan Page ? Who can tell how 
many young merchants have been fortified for lives of 
patient, persevering industry and honesty, by perus- 
ing the life of that glorious merchant prince, Amos 
Lawrence ? Who can tell how many resolved to work 
themselves up to greatness, and struggle against 
adversity, while studying the life of Hugh Miller, the 
stone-mason philosopher of Cromarty? Who can 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 241 

tell what heroism has been evoked by reading the 
lives of Washington and Havelock? 

But no merely human being can be a perfect 
model, for every human being is imperfect. Wash- 
ington was a good man, but he was not the highest 
style of man. Luther was a great man, but he was 
not the highest style of man. Oliver Cromwell was 
a bold man, but he was not the best model of man. 
Fenelon and Thomas a Kempis, Judson and Mills, 
were good men, but they were imperfect. If the 
young man takes either of them, or any one of the 
honored characters that shine among men, the stand- 
ard is too low. If we ascend to the highest pinna- 
cles of human goodness, we shall find capital defects 
in the best of men. The application of these re- 
marks will be seen when I announce as my theme, 

Christ, the Young Man's Perfect Model. 

By assuming human nature, Christ became, in all 
respects, our example. Were he not man as well as 
God, he could not be a pattern for our imitation. 

Should God say to us, " Be ye followers of me," 

obedience to the divine injunction would be an utter 

impossibility. The awful path of the Almighty lies 

amid shining worlds and burning thrones. His 

21 



242 YOUNG man's friend. 

lustre is so dazzling that no one can look on him and 
live. His sublime track is lost in regions we dare 
not tread, and whoever presumes to intrude upon his 
awful secrecy will fall down and cover his face with 
his hands, and cry, with the affrighted seer, " I am 
undone, I am undone, for mine eyes have seen the 
King, the Lord of hosts." But God in Christ, deity 
in man, incarnation, the weakest eye may gaze on 
without fear. As the child covers his face, unable to 
look upon the sun at noon,* but lies hour after hour at 
night looking out upon the moon, as she rides in her 
cloudy chariot through the majestic pathway of the 
stars, so he who shrinks from God out of Christ as a 
consuming fire, comes to God in Christ without fear, 
and gazes on him without injury. 

In the illustration and enforcement of the subject, I 
remark — 

I. Christ presents us with an example of good citi- 
zenship. Government is ordained of God. The 
Holy Scriptures leave us in no doubt, as to the pre- 
rogatives of the civil law. Paul, inspired by the 
Holy Ghost, speaks to us in an authoritative and un- 
mistakable manner. In his Epistle to the Romans, he 
says : " Let every soul be subject unto the higher 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 243 

powers. For there is no power but of God; the 
powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever 
therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance 
of God ; and they that resist shall receive to them- 
selves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good 
works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid 
of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt 
have praise of the same. For he is the minister of 
God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is 
evil, be afraid ; for he beareth not the sword in vain ; 
for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute 
wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must 
needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for 
conscience sake. For, for this cause pay ye tribute 
also ; for they are God's ministers, attending continual- 
ly upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their 
dues : tribute to whom tribute is due ; custom to 
whom custom ; fear to whom fear ; honor to whom 
honor." 

Here we have the politics of Christianity. Civil 
government comes to us with the authority of God, 
as a divine commission, and no man has a right to 
disregard it. In order to be a good Christian, a man 
must be a good citizen. We were made to be gov- 
erned. The thing is a necessity. " It is manifest," 



244 YOUNG man's fkiend. 

says Aristotle, " that the state is one of the things 
which exist by nature, and that man, in virtue of his 
very being, is a political animal." 

Our Lord, when he came upon the stage of action, 
found his country under Roman laws and subject to 
Roman authority. The heel of imperial Caesar rested 
on the Jewish neck, and the hoof of the Roman 
charger trod the pavement of the Hebrew temple. 
But Christ submitted to that authority, yielded obedi- 
ence to the laws. He was for the time being a sub- 
ject of Caesar, and he rendered to Caesar all that be- 
longed to him. He gave no encouragement to muti- 
ny and rebellion. He submitted to Rome, and was 
protected by Rome. He complacently obeyed all the 
laws, and even yielded to an unjust taxation. He 
recognized lawful authority. He bowed to the majes- 
ty of law, whether promulgated by Jewish priests or 
enunciated by Roman emperors. Obedience was a 
principle of his life. He did not hold office under 
Rome, and enjoy the privileges of the empire, and, 
when another was put in power, rise in rebellion, as 
thousands, whose only excuse for what they have 
done is that they could no longer rule, in our land, 
have acted. He was no Catiline nor Arnold. He 
recognized the civil government under which he lived. 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 245 

Pie saw no pretext for raising an army and lifting up 
a banner against imperial Caesar. He wrought a 
miracle to enable his followers to pay the tribute- 
money to the hated Roman tax-gatherer. As long 
as the usurping power asked him to do no wrong, he 
did not feel called upon to advise resistance to it. 
In this respect Christ furnishes us with an admirable 
rule of conduct. He who refuses to obey good laws, 
and submit to wholesome government, is a traitor, not 
only to the government which he repudiates, but to hu- 
manity itself. Law is designed to protect society. 
He who tramples down law tramples down the bul- 
warks of public safety. We had a practical illustra- 
tion of the effects of lawlessness in the rebellion ot 
one third of the States of this Union. Law, never 
has held the people of the South. Customs, forms, 
aristocracies, antecedents, have been the rubbish bul- 
warks of Southern life, and at once, in one angry 
hour, they were scattered like chaff before the wind. 
Every Christian man is bound by his religion to 
obey law, unless that laVv crosses the higher law of 
God. There may be such a state of society that 
the people may be forbidden to do something which 
God requires, or do something which God has for- 
bidden. Government has no right to compel me to 



246 YOUNG man's friend. 

do what God forbids. Christ was a law-keeper, but 
he would not commit sin at the counsel of Rome. 
He cheerfully paid unjust taxes, and yielded to unjust 
demands. The three Hebrew princes in Babylon 
were commanded to fall down and worship an idol on 
the plain of Dura. They chose the burning fiery 
furnace, rather than submit. Submission would have 
been treason to God. Daniel was commanded by a 
Chaldean king not to pray, but he resolved to pray 
though he was cast into the den of lions. Any other 
law the young Hebrews might obey, but that which 
touched the matter of conscience toward God. 
Every wholesome law of this land we are bound to 
obey, and unless some statute is formed which would 
compel disobedience to God, the true Christian should 
yield a cheerful compliance. There was a time when 
this nation was abandoned of God to the enactment 
of a most infamous law. Its author was the traitor 
who was taken from the deck of the Trent, and 
feasted at the princely mansion of the Lord Mayor 
of London. The hour in which it was prepared was 
a million-fold darker than that when the storm of war 
fell on us, a million times more gloomy than the 
shadows which hung over Manassas. The law is a 
dead law now, and its author is infamous. It provided 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 247 

that whenever a fainting, panting fugitive came to 
my door, and asked for a piece of bread and a cup 
of water, I should be fined and imprisoned if I fed 
him. And when he rushed by, bleeding, fainting, 
and panting, if I did not leave my fireside and pulpit, 
and pursue him at the demand of the officer, I was 
to be followed with legal penalties. Such a law as 
that was to be execrated, denounced, spit on, repu- 
diated, hated, despised, loathed, trampled under foot, 
hurled back to the pit whence it originated. We saw, 
under that law, the courthouse in Boston chained 
around, to prevent the escape of a minister of Christ, 
who had been arrested as a slave, and to prevent the 
men, ay, and the women, of Massachusetts, too, 
from taking him from the hands of the United States 
marshal. We saw that preacher led down State 
Street, surrounded by armed marines ready to shoot 
down any one who should manifest sympathy for him 
in his desperation ! Ah, that was in the time forever 
past. With no crime but love of liberty, they 
took him from beneath the shadow of Fanueil Hall, 
from the foot of Bunker Hill, back to chains, whips, 
scars, and bondage. A law capable of this should 
receive the scorn of all men. 

And yet wo have no right to set ourselves up 



248 YOUNG man's friend. 

against a law because we do not like it. There must 
be a nice discrimination, and the only question we 
should ask is, " Does it compel me to violate the law 
of God?" " Let us never lose sight of the fact," 
says a living writer, whose words are full of wisdom, 
" that the powers that be, like the parental authority, 
are ordained of God. Suppose, now, that some of 
the enactments of the state are not such as accord 
with my ideas of reason, or justice, or republicanism. 
Am I at liberty to be^ undutiful to my civic father 
and mother ? Because I do not like a particular law, 
am I at liberty to set myself up against the law ? 
Who has anointed me king over the legislature, and 
the judiciary, and the executive, of my nation? Am 
I to translate the grand doctrine of the higher law, 
as too many have translated it, into the doctrine that 
the higher law is my own will ? Am I to carry the 
noble doctrine of Popular Sovereignty to the extreme, 
that, as an American citizen, I am above the laws of 
the land, and thus illustrate, for the thousandth time, 
the truth of the proverb, that extremes meet, by 
showing that there is very little difference after all 
between the modern anarchical doctrine of the divine 
right of citizen sovereignty, and the old monarchical 
doctrine of the divine right of kings ? Remember 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 249 

that liberty, unbalanced by law, is anarchy. Liberty, 
like every other blessing of God, not excepting even 
the grace of Christ's gospel, may be abused, and 
prove our ruin. Liberty, unabridged by law, is ever 
a perilous thing. Man's true freedom consists, not 
in an unfettered license, but in a voluntary subordi- 
nation to law. And the true freedom of a nation 
consists, not in the suicidal privileges of outlawry, 
but in a cheerful obedience to the laws which they 
themselves enact, and administer by representatives 
of their own free choice. But remember that there 
is a law higher than even the ratified enactments of 
the freely elected deputies of a free people. There 
is a power more omnipotent than that of the people. 
We enter a most solemn and earnest protest against 
the blasphemous dogma, so frequent on the lips of 
certain politicians, and editors, and demagogues, that 
the voice of the people is the voice of God ! Let their 
motto rather be this : the voice of god, let it be 
the yoice of the people ! The popular sove- 
reignty which does not reverently bow before the 
theocracy, whose constitution is the decalogue, and 
whose interpretation is the Life of Jesus of Nazareth, 
is essentially an atheistic democracy. Do you want 
an illustration of this? You shall have one. It 



250 YOUNG man's friend. 

shall be an appalling one. It is the French Revolu- 
tion. ' The people is sufficient for itself/ shrieked 
Anacharsis Clootz, one of the haranguers of that 
awful epoch, < the people is sufficient for itself, and 
will subsist forever. Citizens ! there is no other sove- 
reign than the human race, — the People-God ! To 
this Utopia the only obstruction is religion. Let us 
grind it to powder ! ' And in grinding it to powder, 
they compounded for themselves that terrific, fulmi- 
nating force which suddenly exploded into a thousand 
blackened fragments, the liberty, and the peace, and 
the virtue, and the glory of France. Let a people 
once be seized with the idea that they have no sove- 
reign but their own will, and that the only curb to 
their freedom is physical force, and neither expediency 
nor patriotism, neither reason nor mercy, can prevent 
them from using their liberty as a cloak for a most 
hideous diabolism. ' O, Liberty ! Liberty ! ' ex- 
claimed the illustrious Madame Roland, when, in the 
name of liberty, she was goaded on to the guillotine, 
by a frenzied horde of Parisian outlaws : ' O, Lib- 
erty ! Liberty ! what crimes have been perpetrated in 
thy name ! ' " 

The course of Christ was plain in relation to the 
duties of citizenship, and if the principles of his life 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 251 

had been acted upon, we never should have seen the 
barbarous laws which disgrace our statute-book, nor 
witnessed the wicked Rebellion which slaughtered 
nearly two hundred thousand of our brothers and 
sons. It is because a dumb, faithless pulpit never 
held the conscience of the people of one section of 
the country to the majesty of law, that all this came 
upon us. 

There is no lesson more important for our young 
men to learn from Christ than that of obedience to 
law. Written constitutions are as necessary to the 
maintenance of safety as the laws of the solar system 
are necessary to prevent confusion among the planets. 
A law-breaker is the incendiary of social life, setting 
on fire the temple of our liberties ; the pirate of 
national existence and public order. 

This nation, a few years ago, broke loose from 
law; the constitution was almost effused in blood. 
Men talked lawlessly, wrote lawlessly, and acted law- 
lessly, and we need to study the beautiful life of the 
Redeemer, to learn therefrom what our senators and 
statesmen have never taught us, and with which they 
have failed to inspire us, — true devotion to country, 
true love of liberty, and true obedience to law. The 
pulpit which does not teach good citizenship is a false 



252 young man's friend. 

pulpit ; that does not inculcate love of country, is a 
treacherous pulpit. Next to obedience to God must 
stand our love of country, — our country with its 
constitution and laws, its governments and institu- 
tions ; our country with its flag and its homes ; our 
country in its unity and its indivisibility. 

II. Christ is a model for the Philanthropist. — The 
world is full of false philanthropy. Society is an 
aggregation of extremes, and humanity at times seems 
one wild extravaganza. There is nothing so chimer- 
ical, so uncertain, so freakish and unreliable, as 
modern philanthropy. When a man sets himself up 
as a philanthropist, he is almost sure to go mad over 
some hobby, which he rides as if it were the only 
thing in existence. Society is divided into radicals and 
conservatives, but the conservatives are often more rad- 
ical than the antipodes. There are fanatical conserva- 
tives as well as fanatical progresses. There are some 
people who are absolutely crazy in their attachments 
to old things. Everything new they look upon with 
suspicion, and stand aloof from it. They predicted that 
railroads would spoil the country, and declared that 
telegraphs were an invention of Beelzebub. They are 
troubled because there are so many newspapers printed. 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 253 

The old oaken bucket, the old arm-chair, the old stage- 
coach, are all given up with reluctance. They find 
fault with everything modern, and really believe that 
the seasons have changed for the worse, and the people 
have changed for the worse since they were children. 
The world moves too fast for them ; they are like 
men holding on to the railroad train, not daring to 
let go, and yet not wishing to go on. 

On the other side are those, who, having hastily 
formed opinions of what is right, claim that everybody 
else should see with their eyes, and think as they do. 
They have determined to reform the world in as short 
a time as God created it, — six days. Slavery, war, 
intemperance, gigantic monsters of crime, are to be 
removed in a single week. The millennium must 
come while they live. They cannot wait ; and the 
idea that the world does not turn over at once annoys 
them. On they go, dashing the church one way and 
the state another, and at last, quite out of breath, 
sit down, wondering why creation does not keep pace 
with them. 

Now each of these classes, the fanatical conservative 

and the headlong radical, will find Christ the true, 

divine model of a reformer ; he is a perfect pattern 

of a philanthropist. No raving harangues at public 

22 



254 YOUNG man's friend. 

conventions ; no empty boasts of his own love of 
progress ; no ambitious scheme to head a mob of 
followers ; no moderation which blunted the force 
of his efforts ; no zeal that overrode his purpose. 
He went down to humanity, and, by example and 
precept, lifted it up toward God. In him you behold 
true charity, unostentatious goodness. He went 
about doing good, — that is philanthropy. How 
beautifully does his whole life show the majesty of 
good deeds. True reform is not a Pharisee, sounding 
its own praises on the corners of the streets. It is a 
practical, living power. A visit to the abode of a 
drunkard, a kind effort to reform him, a little assist- 
ance to his family when his heart is soft, is better 
than the most eloquent temperance lecture that ever 
fell from the lips of the most able advocate of that 
cause. The liberty of a slave is nobler than the best 
fourth of July oration ever delivered, and a practical 
sympathy with liberty is of more worth than the 
Declaration of Independence itself. 

Christ stands forth as the practical reformer, doing 
what he said, and practising what he preached. He 
illustrated his theories in his own life. If the world 
would imitate him what a paradise earth would soon 
become. Patient kindness, calm dignity, beautiful 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 255 

courtesy, would take the place of irritation, reck- 
lessness, spasmodic effort, bigotry, and instead of 
the strife of sects and the clangor of parties, we 
should see a philanthropy which would soon make 
suffering, vice, and crime things unknown. 

Our Saviour recognized the fact that God had set 
men in the world for good, with diverse gifts, and he 
taught his followers to forbid no man to work, 
because he followed not with them. "The Holy 
Ghost," says the excellent Gregory, "is an admir- 
able master- workman. He fills a fisherman, and 
makes a preacher of him. He fills a persecutor, and 
transforms him into a teacher of the Gentiles. He 
fills a publican, and makes of him an evangelist. 
Who is this master- workman ? He needs not time 
for his teachings. By whatever means he chooses, 
so soon as he has touched the soul, he has taught it, 
and his mere touch is his teaching." Christ allowed 
each man to work in his own way for the good of 
man, accepting all the moral workmen made by the 
Holy Ghost. 

III. Christ is a perfect example in the treatment of 
enemies. — It is one of the noblest acts of life to treat 
well our bitter foes. All men have enemies. Good 



256 young man's friend. 

or bad, learned or ignorant, rich or poor men will 
have foes. The best men on earth have had. It is 
no compliment to a man to say he has no enemies. 
When you find such a man you find one who has 
nothing positive in his character, nothing marked in 
his course of conduct. He will be a cipher in life, — 
a mere nobody, keeping out of the way of harm, but 
doing no good. That is the man who has no ene- 
mies. The same traits of character which surround 
a man with friends, and link them to him with hooks 
of steel, are the very same traits which will make 
him foes. " Woe unto you when all men speak well 
of you." There is a curse on men who have no 
enemies. 

Christ had friends when on earth ; they were true 
friends. He endeared himself to them by every 
tender tie, and they clung to him like children to the 
neck of a parent. And so he had his enemies, bitter, 
cruel, malignant, and notwithstanding his goodness 
they followed him with unrelenting opposition. So 
we shall have our enemies. We cannot expect to go 
through the world without opposition. To do that 
we must put padlocks on our lips and be dumb in the 
defence of virtue and in the reprobation of crime. 
If a man would escape foes, he must hold back his 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 257 

hand from every work of reform and every deed of 
mercy. Christ was hated by the sinners of his day. 
Luther was hated by the whole papal hierarchy. 
Roger Williams was hated by the Puritans of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. George Washington was hated by the 
tories of the Revolution. Let a man strike a blow 
on any shivering system of corruption and wrong, and 
a howl of rage and pain will be sure to follow. 

Hence, with every good man the question will be, 
not how he shall escape, but how he shall treat enemies. 
And Christ furnishes us with an example bright as 
the world from which he came. If they revile, revile 
not again ; if they smite, do not smite in return ; if 
they rail, do not reply with railing. A great man, a 
good man, can afford to forgive his enemies. It is 
little men that cherish hate; small men, that neither 
forget nor forgive. 

Christ is the model. They called him Beelzebub, 
imposter, liar, hypocrite, wine-bibber ; they exhausted 
the vocabulary of hard names, but he railed not in 
return. They crowned him with thorns; they ar- 
rayed him in purple ; spit upon him, nailed him to a 
cross, yet he pardoned all that. "Father, forgive 
them, they know not what they do." 

A man has secured a noble victory over himself 



258 young man's friend. 

when he can rise above insult, abuse, and persecution ; 
when he can smile at the shafts of rage as they fall 
powerless at his feet ; when he can crush an insult 
out of his memory, and forgive an injury with a smile 
of love. But, young men, Christ did this ! His last 
prayer before he yielded up the ghost was for the 
very murderers that howled around his cross. He 
sets us a bright, glorious example, and displays a char- 
acter worthy of our highest admiration and constant 
imitation. Forgiveness, charity, is one of the noblest 
of the virtues! " Faith, hope, charity; but the 
greatest of these is charity." There is nothing that 
makes a man look so divine and godlike as this. 
Nothing that so ennobles himself and blesses those 
around him. It is the reverse of this, — the unfor- 
giving spirit, that fills the world with vice and sorrow, 
and makes blood flow, and tears fall. 

Some one says : ' < Hath any wronged thee ? Be 
bravely revenged ; slight it, and the work's begun ; 
forgive it, and it is punished. He is below himself 
that is not above an injury." It was one of the 
noble things that can be said of the great and good 
man, Abraham Lincoln, — he was great enough to 
forgive his foes. Thus, like Christ, he won to 
himself the hearts of men. A public man fur- 



CHEIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 259 

nishes the public with this affecting fact, illustrating 
the power of kindness : A disloyal citizen went to 
Washington to seek an interview with his son, who 
was a captured Rebel soldier confined in the Old Cap- 
itol prison. After seeking help from all the Heads 
of the Departments in vain, he turned to his heart- 
breaking wife and said, "We must give it up." 
" Can you not see Mr. Lincoln? " said she. " Ah," 
he replied, " can you ask me to approach and ask a 
favor of a man whom I have abused, written against, 
hated, reproached ? He knows that I am in sympathy 
with the Rebellion." i ' Try him," said his wife. He 
did go, and told the President that he been a sympa- 
thizer with the South, and that he had infused his 
spirit into his son, but begged a release for his poor 
captive child. He was told by the President to sit 
down and be composed. Mr. Lincoln then wrote a 
release for the boy, and handed it to him. He took 
it up, and weeping, said, " Can it be possible that 
this is the man I have so deeply wronged?" He 
sought to thank him ; but, said the President, "Go to 
your son, and if I can serve him hereafter, come and 
see me, and you will always find a friend in me." 

Let Christlike mercy find a home in the hearts of 
men and soon the world will be bathed in the golden 



260 YOUNG man's friend. 

sunlight of a purer, warmer, brighter day than ever 
yet dawned on a fallen race. 

IV. Christ is a perfect guide in all the har gain- 
ings and traffickings of life. — Though not himself 
a merchant, yet he has left the most sublime code 
of laws to regulate mercantile life ever written. 
Christ teaches that honesty should be the law and 
rule of every life. He demonstrates that the honest 
man will be the happy man, the safe man, the suc- 
cessful man. The world has adopted as a motto, 
4 ' Honesty is the best policy , " but the world does not live 
up to its maxim. Doubtless fortunes have been made 
by dishonesty ; men have grown rich by commercial 
frauds ; but where one man has grown rich by dis- 
honesty, multitudes have gone down in wreck and 
ruin. Some men in business will be unfortunate, 
however honest and upright they may be. There are 
emergencies in business life for which none can pre- 
pare ; there are calamities which none can foresee ; 
changes which none can prevent ; and often the good 
temporarily suffer. But there is a Providence which 
is arrayed against property secured by fraud, and 
though a man may heap it up, and treasure it, it will 
either disappear or be the poisonous curse. So 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 261 

Christ teaches ; so the history of the world demon- 
strates. 

Well, Christ stands before business men as a model 
of unswerving honesty and uncorruptible integrity. 
His enemies, when they sought false charges against 
him, and were ready to tell any plausible story, 
dared not, before the people, ascribe to him meanness 
in trade, fraud in his bargains, or wrong in his daily 
transactions. And what a change would come over 
the hard, cold, iron, business world, — that world that 
knows no such word as mercy, that has blotted the 
word grace from its vocabulary, if His maxims could 
be adopted. What heart-anguish would disappear ; 
what deep soul-sorrow would be dissolved. How 
earth would change, and man would ascend in real 
nobility of nature. If Christ's law was the law of 
trade, this would be a brave old world to live in, 
almost like heaven, — full of right, great, open-heart- 
ed, sunny-faced right, instead of creeping, scowling 
wrong. The sum of human happiness would be 
greatly augmented, and joy would swell in great 
oceans all over the globe. 

" If man dealt less in stocks and bonds, 

And more in words and deeds fraternal ; 
If Love's work had more willing hands 
To link this world to the supernal ; 



262 young man's friend. 

If man stored up love's oil and wine, 
And on bruised hearts would pour it — 

If yours and mine 

Would once combine, 
The world would be the better for it. 

" If men were wise in little things, 

Affecting less in all their dealings ; 
If hearts had fewer rusted strings 
To isolate their kindly feelings ; 
If men, when wrong beats down the right, 
Would strike together and restore it — 
If right made might 
In every fight, 
The world would be the better for it." 

V. Christ was a perfect example of Piety. — Christ 
was human. He was man as much as we are men. 
He had a manward side of his character, and in his 
flesh had as much weakness and as many infirmities 
as we. The sublime motto of his life was, " I come 
to do the will of him that sent me." In the midst 
of one of the most sinful of all the ages, he maintained 
his holiness. He stood firm against all the seductive 
influences that were brought to bear upon him. He 
renounced all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory 
of them, when promised him for one sinful act. His 
life presents a most beautiful view of consistency, 






CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 263 

humility, chastity, and love. Not a fault, not a 
blemish, not a stain. He stands forth in the world's 
history, as the man who knew God best and loved him 
most. Who obeyed him most implicitly, though in 
his higher nature was equal to him in dignity. His 
meat and drink was to do the will of God, and ac- 
complish his great work on earth. 

What a beautiful model Christ is, then, for the citi- 
zen, for the philanthropist, for the business man, for 
the Christian, — the only human life that never had a 
spot on it ; the only preacher to whom men cannot say, 
" Physician, heal thyself; " the only merchant who 
ever knew the true value of the soul, and had a true 
estimate of earth ; the only citizen who ever rendered 
just what belonged to God, and just what belonged to 
government ; the only religionist who ever illustrated 
all his teachings in his own life. 

Let me urge young men to take Christ as a 
model. You can have no higher standard. All 
young men are accustomed to study character. Not 
long ago, the life of Sir Fowell Buxton appeared in 
England, and the study of that life portrait has be- 
come a source of immense good to the youth of Great 
Britain. The biography of Amos Lawrence has been 
the spur to many a young merchant, and the study of 



264 YOUNG man's friend. 

Harlan Page has inspired many a humble Christian. 
The biographies of Mills and Judson, Howard and 
Wilberforce, have been the text-books of thousands, 
who have sought to imitate them. But they were all 
imperfect models. The best of them are blotched and 
stained. There are deformed features in every one 
of them. But Christ is the embodiment of perfec- 
tion. The Bible is his biography ; this holy book re- 
veals his life ; shows the inner man, develops his 
glories, and holds him up for our imitation and ex- 
ample. I say, then, to the citizen of this land, which 
now heaves like a vessel on the ocean, — look to 
Christ, as the best model of a loyal citizen. I say to 
the philanthropist, look to Christ ; he was the best 
practical specimen of a true reformer. I say to the 
merchant, look to Christ ; he has the best code of 
laws to regulate trade. I say to the artisan, look to 
Christ, the best model of Christian architecture, the 
best specimen of a master-builder the world ever saw. 
Look at him ! Christ your example ! Look at him ! 
treading every path you are called to tread, enduring 
every sorrow you endure, setting an example in all 
the acts of life. 

But I should not do my whole duty to the subject, 
did I not say that the character of Christ as an 
example is not the highest in which he appears. 



CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 265 

Grand, divine, glorious as lie is in his aspect as a 
friend of the young and guide of the aged, there is 
another character which reveals him more fully. 
He is the Saviour of man, and to all the young 
he comes as the Redeemer and Almighty helper. 
He saves from sin, as well as guides by his exam- 
ple. He will save you from your sins, and no other 
can. The example of Christ is not enough for all 
our wants. We have sins to be forgiven, moral 
indebtedness to be discharged, and souls to be saved. 
Christ's example will no more discharge our sins 
than the example of Hugh Miller, or George Wash- 
ington, or Martin Luther, will help us pay our debts. 
Christ must come in as surety and atonement. 
" Come here" says Matthew Henry, "and see the 
victories of the cross. Christ's wounds are thy heal- 
ing; his agonies, thy repose; his conflicts, thy con- 
quests ; his groans, thy songs ; his pains, thine ease ; 
his shame, thy glory ; his death, thy life ; his suffer- 
ing, thy salvation." 

And another character Christ has. He will judge 
the world. He will take his place in the last grand 
assize, and pronounce the sentence of acquittal or 
condemnation on all of us. 

Behold him, then, living, so that his daily conduct 
23 



266 young man's fkiend, 

is a guide for all men ; dying, that he may deliver 
all who believe on him, from their sins ; sitting on 
the judgment throne, that all who stand before him 
may receive justice at his awful hand. And now 
what relationship does Christ bear to you? Is he 
your Saviour? Have you ever gone to him, feeling 
the great wants of your soul, and cast yourself upon 
him? 

I have met, floating through the papers, written 
by I know not whom, this incident of a poor sinner 
saved by grace in England : Richard Weaver one 
day met a poor man who went in rags. This man 
being a Christian, he wished to befriend him ; he told 
him if he would go home with him, he would give 
him a suit of clothes. " So," said Richard, "I 
went up stairs and took off my second best, and put 
on my Sunday best. I sent the man up stairs, and 
told him he would find a suit which he could put on ; 
it was my second best. So after he had put on the 
clothes, and left his rags behind, he came down and 
said, ' Well, Mr. Weaver, what do you think of 
me?' i Well,' I said, 'I think you look very 
respectable.' ' Oh, yes, but, Mr. Weaver, it is not 
for me ; I am not respectable, it is your clothes that 
are respectable.' " And so," added Mr. Weaver, 






CHRIST THE PERFECT MODEL. 267 

t ' so it is with the Lord Jesus Christ ; he meets us 
covered with rags and the filth of sin, and he tells us 
to go and put on not his second best, but the best 
robe of his perfect righteousness ; and when we come 
down with that on, we say, 4 Lord, what dost thou 
think of me?' and he says, ' Why, thou art all fair, 
my love ; there is no spot in thee.' We answer, < No, 
it is not I, it is thy righteousness ; I am comely 
because thou art comely ; I am beautiful because thou 
art beautiful.' " 

On, then, to the battle of life, young men. Battle 
of life? Yes, a fiercer battle than was fought at 
Lodi, Austerlitz, or Marengo. Life is a day ; its 
work a strife. The sun that in the morning looks 
upon thee hopeful, exultant, eager, impatient for the 
fight, may in the evening look down upon thee beaten, 
broken, and destroyed. England's poet laureate asks, 

" Is it the frost that glitters so white ? 

Is it the wind in yonder glen ? 
No ! no ! there are tents on the mountain-height, 

And that is the marshalling sound of men. 
Bright o'er an army the morning shines, 

Gleaming as o'er a ruffled lake ; 
Dark lie the cannon along the lines, 

Like hurricane clouds before they break. 



v. Q 



/ 

' r* *3 iJ' 

268 YOUNG man's friend. 

Over the wild hill and over the valley, 
Wildly the clarion calls to the rally ! 
Float ! banners, float ! bright as the sunset ! 
Blow, bugles, blow ! blow for the onset ! " 

That is before the battle. That is while the field 
is green, untrodden by the mailed heel of the soldier, 
or cut by the iron hoof of the steed. After battle 
how is it ? 

" Is it a ruin, old and gray, 

That glimmers in dusty twilight so ? 
A ruin whose walls and people lay 
Mingled together in dust below, 
O'er which a moon of lurid red 

Wanders in smoky vapors lost ? 
No ! no ! 't is the shadowy field of the dead, 
And the wreck of a discomfited host. 
Over the hill and over the valley, 
Never shall clarion call to the rally ! 
Droop ! banners, droop ! droop like the willow ! 
Weep ! angels, weep ! o'er the soldier's pillow ! " 

Let Christ be the Captain of thy salvation, and the 
evening stars shall look down upon thy life-victory. 
Look to Jesus. Follow Jesus, Trust in Jesus. 
Stand up for Jesus. Fight for Jesus. Die for 
Jesus. 



